Problems of readjustment after the war

Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

PROBLEMS OF
READJUSTMENT
AFTER THE WAR

ROBLEMS OF
READJUSTMENT
AFTER THE WAR

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SEEN BY

PRESERVATION

SERVICES

DATE

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D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK :: :: LONDON

1915

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COPYRIGHT, 1915, BT
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

I. THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY . .

Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D., LL.D.,
Litt.D. Professor of the Science of Gov-
ernment, Harvard University.

II. AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE WAR . 37

Edwin R A. Seligman, LL.B., Ph.D.,
LL.D., Professor of Political Economy,
Columbia University.

III. THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION ... 73

Franklin H. Giddings, Ph.D., LL.D., Pro-
fessor of Sociology and the History of
Civilization, Columbia University.

IV. THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE

STATE 98

Westel W. Willoughby, Ph.D., Professor
of Political Science, Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity.

Y. THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW . . . 129

George Grafton Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., Pro-
fessor of International Law, Harvard Uni-
versity.

CONTENTS

PAGE

VI. THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE AND

FINANCE 150

Emory K. Johnson, Ph.D., Sc.D., Pro-
fessor of Transportation and Commerce,
University of Pennsylvania.

YII. THE CONDUCT OF MILITARY AND NAVAL WAR-
FARE 179

Caspar F. Goodrich, Rear- Admiral United
States Navy, Retired.

VI

PROBLEMS OF READJUST-
MENT AFTER THE WAR

THE WAR AND DEMOCEACY
ALBEBT BTJSHNELL HAET

"The proof of democracy, ' ' says an Ameri-
can sage, "is, does it democf" Just now that
question comes home to all civilized mankind.
Up to the twenty-third of July, 1914, every sig-
nificant nation in the world from Montenegro
to British Columbia had at least the appearance
of the admission of the people to a share in
their own government. Democracy was consid-
ered the ripest flower of the highest civilization.
Out of the nine great powers of the world, three
— the United States, France, and China — were
republics in form; and in each of the other six
< — Great Britain, Germany, Austro-Hungary,

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

Russia, Italy, and Japan — the representatives
of the people had established their right to
share the government with the personal sover-
eign.

Today seven of those nine powers are plunged
into the heat of the fray; and in every one
democracy seems, for the time being, sub-
merged. In not one of those countries are the
people or their representatives now legislat-
ing for the crisis or keeping the ministerial ex-
ecutives in control by questions and criticisms
upon military affairs. Nor does it appear that
the people at large or the voters in any country
resent this exclusion from a part in the great
decisions that are being made. "We hear
vaguely of bread riots; but the only constitu-
tional crisis that has come about in the eight
months of the war has been the change of for-
eign minister in Austro-Hungary from an Aus-
trian to an Hungarian. In England a few criti-
cisms of the government are made in the public
press ; most of which are received by the public
as disloyal utterances ; none appears in Ger-
many except a rare complaint by Socialist mem-
bers of the Eeichstag. There is no public opin-
ion— or rather public opinion compels every one
not only to support the war but to support it

2

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

with vehemence. Unhappy subjects of hostile
countries are treated all over Europe as though
they were escaped convicts.

In the strongly monarchical countries of Rus-
sia, Germany and Austro-Hungary the author-
ity was naturally retained by the emperor and
his immediate group of councilors and officers.
In all three countries the army and navy are
closely centralized, and parliaments have never
had much to do with them except to vote upon
the terms of service and the money credits. It
is only about a year and a half since the Ger-
man Reichstag by a vote of 293 to 54, expressed
its discontent at the ill-treatment of the civil-
ians of Zabern by military officers ; nevertheless,
Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg refused to re-
sign and allowed the officers to be acquitted by
court-martial. In France and England the leg-
islative bodies have for many years been accus-
tomed to take a lively part in government while
war was going on. Not even in the Boer War of
1899-1900, nor in the serious likelihood of wars
involving France in 1905 and 1911, did tho^e
bodies abdicate their functions. They have
done so now. For when the representatives of
the people are silent, the necessary decisions
are not postponed, they are simply made by

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the executive. In this war the civil authori-
ties have either given carte blanche to the mili-
tary or have accepted and carried out their
will.

Is this the end of European democracy?
Will example and military pressure cause the
end of American democracy? Are the people
of the world giving over their destinies to the
judgment of a handful of statesmen and war-
riors, practically designated by themselves?
Have the peoples as a whole no wisdom left?
Is there a difference in the makeup of the hu-
man mind between times of war and times of
peace? Or when the cyclone is past, will the
owners of the various ships of state again claim
their right to their own property? These crit-
ical questions come home with peculiar force
to the people of the United States ; for popular
government in America depends upon the
power of democracy to repel the shock of mili-
tarism.

One reason for the atrophy of parliaments is
that in every belligerent country the people
accepted the war when it broke out, took it up,
made it their own, and are carrying it on as a
national duty. In every country the thinking
people as well as the unthinking were convinced

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THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

that their country had been unjustly and mali-
ciously attacked and would be destroyed unless
the population rallied to the support of the
government. The way for this conviction was
prepared by a long propaganda in newspapers,
periodicals, and books, especially in Germany,
Great Britain, and France. For more than ten
years, writers in all three countries have tried
to arouse their countrymen to a belief that they
were in imminent danger of invasion by im-
placable enemies.

For example, in 1897 an English admiral in
the Fortnightly Review declared that "if Ger-
many were extinguished tomorrow, there is not
an Englishman in the world who would not be
richer." In 1912 Bernhardi's book stated more
clearly than previous writers the aspirations
and dangers of Germany and demanded for her
" world-power or downfall." Cartoons, pam-
phlets, and elaborate books have set forth the
grievances of various countries and have sug-
gested methods of carrying on "the next war."
In Eastern Europe a campaign of hate has been
going on ever since the Turkish Eevolution of
1908. The Austrians and the Hungarians had
been gradually accumulating a reservoir of
wrath against the Servians, because of their

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

manifest hope to split off the Serb provinces
from Austro-Hungary. The Russians have
been nursing resentment ever since 1908, when
they had not the military strength to resist the
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by
Austria.

In the French school geographies, Alsace-
Lorraine has for years been shown in a differ-
ent color from the rest of Germany. Treitschke
long ago taught his countrymen that ' ' England
is today the shameless representative of bar-
barism in international law." Before the war
broke out thousands of respectable people who
could not bring themselves to believe unproved
evil of their own friends and neighbors, the
people whom they knew best, were convinced
that unknown Englishmen and Englishwomen,
Russians, Germans or Servians, were sodden
with crime and thirsting for other people's
blood.

All this in spite of decades of efforts to bring
people into a better understanding with each
other, and a conscious effort to found a kind
of world democracy of men of science, letters,
and business. Students have traveled from
country to- country; fellowships have been
founded for foreigners; professors have been

6

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

exchanged; addresses delivered by men from
other countries. There has been an era of world-
congresses of physicians, of historians, of elec-
tricians, of engineers. Considerable groups of
business men have traveled about to make them-
selves acquainted with the spirit of foreign
countries. When the crisis came, of course
every man adhered to his own country: one
cannot serve two masters. Was it also neces-
sary for every man to deny his own experience
of the character, courtesy, and high-minded-
ness of his foreign friends I Philosophic Eucken
rolls under his tongue as a sweet morsel a de-
nunciation of "Servian accessories to murder,
Eussian lust for conquest, English perfidious-
ness, and at last, Japanese scoundrelism, all
united." On the other side the Catholic Arch-
bishop of Glasgow declares the war to be,
"Christianity against paganism, the Cross and
its civilization against the crescent and its bar-
barism ; against the even worse — because delib-
erate and calculated — barbarism of the War
Lord."

It is a fair question whether most of these
good people who enjoy bad language would not
have been just as sttre of the greatness of
their respective nations and the wisdom of

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

their leaders if they had been told that all the
monarch s and all the ministers were convinced
that there was no sufficient cause for war. The
trouble in such crises is that it is impossible for
the people to form a judgment as to the danger,
because they have not the facts. They must
rely on somebody to judge of the crisis as a
whole. In the United States we should expect
the Senators and Eepresentatives of the na-
tional Congress in such a crisis to be the peo-
ple's eyes and lips. Congress might be more
belligerent than the President, as it was at the
beginning of the Spanish War in 1898 ; but Con-
gress then believed that its constituents ex-
pected the action they took, and that was why
only one member of the House ventured to
suggest even a brief delay. Let the name of
Boutelle of Maine be remembered as that
of a brave and honest man who wished at
least to give public opinion an opportunity to
form.

When the pinch came in Europe not a single
one of the national legislatures, based on popu-
lar representation, did its duty. The facts are
obvious and dangerous. At the time the war
broke out four of these bodies were actually in
session or could be immediately summoned.

8

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

The Parliament of Great Britain, the Reich-
stag of Germany, the Senate and Chambre of
France, and the Russian Duma were in exist-
ence, filled with national concern, ready to give
their wisdom toward the great decisions that
had to be made. Not one of them was consulted
till after war had actually broken out. Sir Ed-
ward Grey's first definite statement to Parlia-
ment was on the third of August, a day after
he had committed his nation to the protection
of the French coast. The Reichstag was con-
sulted on August 4 when Germany was already
at war both with Russia and with France. Pre-
mier Viviani made an imperfect statement to
the Chambre on August 3 and not till August 5
did he fully explain the situation. The Rus-
sian Duma was called in special session August
8, seven days after war had broken out with
Germany. The Japanese Diet was in session
and acquiesced in the war ; but when later it
would not vote the military measures which the
Prime Minister thought necessary it was dis-
solved and a new election ordered. In Austro-
Hungary there is no federal parliament; but
neither the Austrian nor Hungarian parliament
was consulted either as to the ultimatum sent
to Servia July 23, or on the attitude of the Im-

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

perial Government toward the various proposi-
tions for mediation or toward a direct under-
standing with Russia.

When summoned, every parliament practi-
cally abdicated; and probably would not have
been allowed to remain in session if it had not
been expected to abdicate. Representative de-
mocracy in Europe seems almost to have dis-
appeared for the time being. In not one of
those countries are the people through their
representatives now legislating for their ex-
traordinary needs, or keeping track of the man-
ner in which their affairs are carried out by
ministerial executives. Only in London are
questions put which might imply a lack of con-
fidence in any military man or action. All the
parliaments vote prodigious measures without
assuming the right to alter a hair's breadth.
The British Parliament strove for nearly two
centuries to acquire control over the purse ; and
is now ready to vote a thousand million dollars
in a paragraph without so much as a suggestion
as to the destination and use of the money.
Enough that it is to be spent by the military
men in carrying on the war. The German Diet
voted the supply asked for by the government
with only one negative vote. Numerous stat-

10

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

utes solemnly enacted after long and careful
discussion by the legislative authority are now
superseded or ignored by votes of the Bundes-
rath in Germany, or by Orders in Council is-
sued by the British Ministry under a general
authority from Parliament. That conquered
provinces should be governed by military com-
manders who levy contributions, assess fines on
the cities, and exercise the power of life and
death, is not remarkable. So much was done
in the Philippines by the American military au-
thorities. It is, however, an amazing spectacle
to see the interior of lands which have hardly
as yet seen an enemy — England, Scotland,
Ireland, Brandenburg, Bavaria, and South-
ern France — practically governed by martial
law.

One of the triumphs and protections of demo-
cratic government is the liberty of the press.
It has been won by sheer determination in the
teeth of the fundamental belief of despotic and
dull governments that it is hurtful to them to
have people discuss what is going on. In Rus-
sia there is still a pig-headed censor system in
times of peace, with its blacking-brush obliter-
ation of what the censor does not like. Yet even
there, since the establishment of the Duma,

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

there has been an approach to common-sense.
In Austria and Germany the journalists have
been more or less tied up by official deposits of
money which can be drawn upon in case of fines
or verdicts against them. They have even had
the droll institution of the " jail editor" ! Every
journal has been required to file the name of
its responsible editor; in many cases he is a
man whose sole "responsibility" is to take his
sentence and go to jail whenever his paper has
been too bold. In France there was a reckless
freedom of the press, restrained by occasional
shootings. Germany has for years had, along-
side many free and fearless newspapers, the
institution of the reptile press, which crawls at
the feet of the government functionaries who
feed it with official information and subsidies.
Nevertheless editors and journalists like Maxi-
milian Harden of Berlin and Emile Zola have
rendered a magnificent service to civilization by
focusing the attention of the voters upon a case
of oppression or corruption. As recently as
1911, almost the whole press of Germany de-
nounced the slashing of the lame schoolmaster
of Zabern by the undaunted Lieutenant von
Forstner. In England every newspaper has
been free to say anything it chose about any

12

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

public official, though liable to be cast in heavy
damages if it assailed a private reputation.

How is it today? Even in England there is
no such thing as a free press. Among the bel-
ligerent powers no criticisms are allowed on
military movements or commanders, and the of-
fense of printing the truth about things already
known and published in other countries may
lead to severe punishment. The government
was so childish as to conceal the loss of the
Audacious, which was known to hundreds of
people. People expect censors in Austria, but
it seems ridiculous for the London newspapers
to be deprived of dispatches which go freely
to America. Bernard Shaw and Vernon Lee
tell John Bull that he is vain, stupid, and no
better than his neighbors, and that is allowed
to pass. Otherwise the military censors every-
where employ the blue pencil and scissors.
Partly because of this lack of common-sense
news, in all countries there is a rage and fury
against the unhappy citizens of enemy coun-
tries who have been stranded away from home.
The fear of spies is very like the fear of witches
in colonial times, not founded on reason or af-
fected by the lack of evidence. The possession
of a German name, doing business behind a

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

German sign, speaking a German sentence, may
draw a mob upon an innocent person in a non-
German-speaking country. Free thought, pub-
lic discussion, the will of the people, seem to
have lost their meaning.

One of the main arguments for universal mili-
tary service is that, since every able-bodied
military man is a soldier and in most coun-
tries also a voter, the representatives of the
people will never sanction a war that is not
absolutely unavoidable. In the present great
struggle not one country was held back for five
minutes by the pressure of its citizen soldiery.
In fact, the breaking out of the war is a con-
clusive proof that universal service brings about
a habit of mind which is very unfavorable to
democracy. The citizen may oppose war,
speak against it, write against it, ask his rep-
resentative to vote against it. The same man
as a soldier is taught that to oppose war is
cowardly, a breach of discipline, contrary to the
spirit of the service. On one side a man is an
independent unit in a great aggregation and he
may join with other units in peaceable remon-
strance. On the other side, he is an undivided
part of a military community in which argu-
ment, hesitation, and discussion are traitorous.

14

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

An army made up of democrats is not a demo-
cratic army, least of all in services like those
of Germany and Austria ; there, the officers are
of a different social class from the men, and
have no conception of accepting the decision of
men in the ranks as a restraint upon their
own action.

Here is the evidence that even a mild mili-
tarism has very unfavorable effects upon
democracy, even where it consists only in giv-
ing a favored position to military men, exalt-
ing military courage and preaching the gospel
of obedience to one's superior officer. The goal
of Americans is freedom. The joy of American
living is the right to have one 's own way. The
child looks forward to the day when he will be-
come a man and can play a man's independent
part. The sculptor searches for inspiration in
the picturesque life of his own country and
molds the frontiersman, the Indian, the cow-
boy. The triumph of American education is
the right of the professor to speak his mind.
As a nation we go to an excess in freedom. The
tramp follows his instinct to wander and to be
fed by strangers. The yellow journal pushes
the right of a free press to the point of scur-
rilousness. Children select their schools and

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

colleges, their friends and amusements. The
trade in poisonous drugs is just now coming
under regulation. Yet there is no genuine and
wholesome American who does not feel that
these extravagances are to be endured, if neces-
sary, to keep the two pearls of great price —
freedom of body from the control of another
person, and the freedom of the soul to see and
to describe things as they are.

War is the negative and denial of freedom.
All modern wars rest upon the universal legal
principle that it is the right of the state to
command the service of any or all of its sons.
The free American may be, indeed 'ought to be,
compelled to undergo some military training.
If he formally enrolls himself in the militia, he
must obey orders to turn out for drill, camp,
maneuvers, or riot service. The recruited man,
the militiaman, and the drafted man may all
be forced into the army in case of actual war.
Once a man puts on the knapsack and takes
hold of the rifle, he becomes the servant of his
officers and the bondman of the state. "Obey
orders, " is the first and last letter of the sol-
dier's alphabet. That means to march for ap-
parently unending days, to carry heavy bur-
dens, to perform repulsive tasks, to live on

16

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

scanty food, to drink noxious water, to sleep
in the mud and wake to a miserable meal. The
better organized the army, the more thoroughly
does the once free man become a machine, or
rather a cog in a machine. If his orders are to
fire at the enemy, he sends his bullet in the air
and it descends to kill a man whom he has never
seen and who, if he could have known it, might
have been a heart friend. He must obey orders
if they bid him throw his living body into the
cracking, hissing zone of death. He must obey
orders if he is directed to fire on non-com-
batants, or to drop bombs on nursemaids and
babies in perambulators, or to sink a ship full
of helpless women and children. Disobedience,
even under such circumstances, is the heaviest
of sins, to be atoned for by a disgraceful court-
martial and a shameful traitor's death.

This is the contrast between freedom and
war, the one aiming to make men rational, think-
ing, considering beings; the other depending
on the expectation that men will abdicate their
own souls and do just what they are told.
Hence, war has been the enemy of republics in
all ages. The Greek, the Eoman, and the medi-
eval democracies all went down in blood at
last. What is the hope for mankind, the safety

17 ^:;

f*&j ^

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

of civilization, if Mars is to lay his mailed hand
upon the shoulder of every able-bodied man and
say, " Think no more; only shoot "f On one
side, democracy, on the other, militarism, con-
tend for the dominion of the world.

In the last quarter-century the organized
Socialists have been a power in the affairs of
government ; in some countries they express the
purposes of the working classes. In Germany
the so-called Social Democratic party is the only
party of protest, and its candidates receive the
votes of hundreds of thousands of those who
are discontented with what they think the arbi-
trariness of the government. In 'the United
States the avowed Socialists polled 900,000
votes in the presidential election of 1912. They
are in most countries well organized and are
strong advocates of an international under-
standing between the working classes. Previ-
ous to the war they were expected to defend
ultra-democratic principles. What have they
done in the present crisis f As an organization
they have in all countries simply abdicated for
the time being.

When the pinch came it was natural that the
English Socialist should be an Englishman first,
and a Socialist after the war shall be over. But

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THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

in the militaristic countries there is a stronger
reason for joining in the war with heart and
soul. In Germany, for example, the aim of the
Socialists is to show that they are not the dan-
gerous and destructive class that has been pic-
tured by high authority. They expect eventu-
ally to lead the majority of their countrymen
to their way of thinking, and their influence
would be absolutely destroyed for decades to
come, if after the war they should be held up as
the sole body of Germans who would not defend
the Fatherland. The Socialists at the front
are earning the right to say, " We have not only
lived with you ; we have died with you. And you
can no longer hold that our doctrines are con-
trary to patriotism and to self-defense." John
Burns, the labor leader, resigned from the min-
istry in England, but that was not because he
was a Socialist, but because he felt with justice
that he and his friends had not been consulted
like other members of the Cabinet; that the
aristocracy had made a capital decision with-
out them.

Yet though Socialism as a principle is para-
lyzed in the great war, Socialism as a principle
has never in the history of mankind won such
a victory. The method of the war has given

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the Socialists ammunition for half a century to
come ; it proves their contention that the com-
munity can work more efficiently through col-
lective effort than through individual effort.
Never has state Socialism been practiced on
such a scale and over such an area. For the
transportation and supply of armies, all the
governments have taken whatever they wanted.
They have for the time being nationalized the
railroads, the food supply, the manufacture of
arms, and will apply the same principles to the
putting in and harvesting of crops, the produc-
tion of mines, and the output of factories.
What an uplift of the world would 'come about,
if the nations could apply to such matters as
education and social welfare the same terrific
energy, the same abnegation of individual profit
and interest and direction! Unfortunately, or
perhaps fortunately, this tremendous single-
minded national devotion is possible only be-
cause it is unusual. A horse can be urged to
put forth for a few minutes four or five times
the muscular strength which he usually employs
for drawing a load, but nothing will compel
him to keep up that effort for a day or an hour.
The screws of a monster ship will work steadily
when they are submerged, but when the ship

20

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

pitches, and the screws come out of the water,
they may rack the machinery to pieces.

Nevertheless the state Socialism thus em-
ployed is not of a kind that commends itself
to the Socialist. It accords with the maxim,
"from everybody according to his ability," but
does not accept i l to everybody according to his
needs. " The army comes first, second, third
and fourth in the scale of thought and expendi-
ture. To keep the army going, men must work ;
and a strike in the arms factory is looked upon
as hardly less than treason. All the great coun-
tries involved, except England, have the un-
questioned right to call out every man physic-
ally able to take part in a campaign, and proba-
bly millions who are not physically able. Eng-
land will eventually come to conscription if the
war lasts long enough; because the "thin red
line of 'eroes ' ' will not be numerous enough for
the crisis of attack or defense.

It is going beyond orthodox Socialism to
compel men to work under military guard, and
that is what every European country will do
if it cannot otherwise keep up the supply of food
and munitions. The commandeering of metals
and food already practiced by Germany and
Austria will be adopted by other nations if that

21

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

is the only way to keep the populations alive
and to supply the armies.

That is indeed the statecraft of our In-
ternational Workers of the World; but the
I. W. W. expect to control supply and trans-
portation through their own chosen leaders, and
not through any sort of hereditary or military
officials. Socialists may enter the army to fight
a foreign enemy ; yet when it comes to the point
of shooting down fellow Socialists because they
question the authority of the government, state
Socialism runs on a rock. It is hard to see how
this new Socialistic state differs from the old-
fashioned despotisms which assumed the right
to seize any or all of the property in their coun-
try in order to use it for what they assumed
to be national purposes. What is the difference
in theory of government between a state in
which Lord Kitchener calls out men and directs
the distribution of food, and one in which Louis
XIV did the same thing?

For many years the advocates of peace have
been banking upon the self-interests of the busi-
ness men, both large and small. Have they not
a strong influence upon government in every
country? The great money-lenders were sup-
posed to form anti-war syndicates, looking after

22

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

their interest and their coupons, and their ex-
pirations and the drawings of their bonds for
payment. The world had almost come to be-
lieve that the power of commercial and finan-
cial syndicates was the greatest in the ptate.
Inasmuch as they have financed the wars of the
past half -century, they thought they were in a
steel fortress ; they believed apparently that no-
body could make war without their lead. Was it
not the money-lenders or rather the no-money-
lenders, who made necessary the Peace of Ports-
mouth in 1905 between Japan and Russia? Was
it not the bankers who by withdrawing the
French funds in 1911 nearly brought about a
panic on the Berlin Bourse, and proved to the
Germans that they could not afford to go to
war on the Agadir incident? On the contrary,
so far as the great capitalists work through
their ramifying influences on the electorate or
by direct contact with the executives, they have
absolutely failed to delay the war by a single
twenty-four hours. During the last twelve
months they have acted as reservoirs of capital,
and have remarkably supported the operations
of their governments. The popular subscrip-
tions to the German and English loans are un-
deniable proofs of the strength and flexibility of

23

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the modern financial system. Nevertheless the
capitalists accept the doctrine that it is their
business to lend and not to consult. The power,
weight, and authority of the men of business
have for the time being ceased to control their
governments.

Another class of business men is that of the
small dealers, manufacturers and traders who
up to this time in all countries have kept up
profitable business, notwithstanding the ten-
dency to bring industries together into large
units. Whatever the limitations on the suf-
frage, this class everywhere possesses it ; and it
is as much interested as any class in politics,
elections and popular government. Here, if
anywhere, ought to be found a solid wall of re-
sistance against an unnecessary war, and an un-
breakable determination to take part by dis-
cussion and through representatives in the
management of affairs. Yet that class has
shown no more resisting power or directing
power than the laborers or the capitalists. Ger-
many has always been interested in and pro-
tective of der kleine Mann. In England the
small shopkeeper is still a pillar of the state,
and in France the family business and indus-
tries are the admiration of all investigators.

24

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

Could not those people rally to defend their
obvious interests? They stand to lose more
than anybody else. The workman who survives
the war will find employment, perhaps on more
favorable terms than before. The great cap-
italist will come out the creditor of his country,
and his children and grandchildren will draw
the interest. The small men stand to lose more
than their proportion of lives, all their savings,
and very likely their business.

With the small business man is closely asso-
ciated the farmer, whether land-owning or rent-
ing; and that includes a considerable part of
the peasants in all the European countries.
Those people ought to be depended upon to
look after their own interests. All representa-
tive democracies consider them the safest class
in the state. Yet in not a single country has
that class asserted itself ! Higher taxes, expro-
priation of crops and stocks of goods by the
state, the draining of their savings, the stop-
page of their little trade, any one of these
things would cause an overturn at the next elec-
tions in ordinary times; yet they are all ac-
cepted without a quaver. What is the matter?
Have men lost their interest in their own af-
fairs, their farms, their gardens, their crops,

25

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

their workshops, their offices? Has the desire
to make one's children safe and comfortable
ceased to be a motive in the human mind?
Above all, has the democracy which has been
growing steadily for a hundred and fifty years,
suddenly lost its vitality?

The picture of the apparent abdication of
popular government in Europe has been de-
liberately drawn in strong colors, because it is
a part of a problem to which the people of the
United States are now directing their minds.
In not a single European country have the peo-
ple any intention of giving up the hard-earned
right to share in their own government. There
is no reason to doubt that the German Social-
ists, for instance, will continue to send to the
Eeichstag a large number of their representa-
tives. Some of the oppressed classes at the bot-
tom of the social and political scale may come
to their own. If Jews in Poland and Gypsies
in Eoumania can die for their country, have
they not earned the right to live in it on equal
terms? The confidence of the various peoples,
their sacrifices, their heroism, ought to be a liv-
ing lesson that they are capable of helping to
direct the destinies of their land. The Duma
which has stood by the Czar and the aristoc-

26

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

racy of Russia can hardly be treated in this
furnace flame as a set of visionary radicals.
The war ought to draw the social classes of
every country closer together.

The real reason for the present state of de-
mocracy is obviously that the people of every
nation believe that their only hope of victory
is in concentration of their force. What they
have actually done is to constitute groups of
dictators for the time being. Never was there
a greater mistake than to suppose that the Em-
peror Francis Joseph and Kaiser Wilhelm II
are tyrants who have usurped power. Author-
ity has been deposited in their hands because
national armies, directed by a single impulse,
are doubly as effective as armies acting sepa-
rately. We of the United States know that full
well, because General Grant in 1864 was the
first man to insist that the Eastern and Western
armies should move at the same time and with
a common purpose ; and that is why Grant and
Sherman and Thomas and Farragut finished up
the war. Even in our war the legal authority
was concentrated in the hands of President Lin-
coln. No military critic would admit that the
Senate and House at that time contributed much
to military efficiency. The main service of Con-

27

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

gress was to keep the government in touch with
the people at large, and to maintain enthusiasm
through four dragging years. The Germans
are right and the English are right in their
feeling that the whole country must pool its
issues, must concentrate its confidence, must
accept great decisions made by a few self-chosen
people.

For the national dangers are terrific. Every
belligerent except Eussia has thrown into the
fray its existence on the scale which it deems
respectable. If Great Britain is defeated, she
will lose a great part of her colonies and the
naval prestige accumulated during three cen-
turies. If Austria is defeated, she may be dis-
membered. If Servia is defeated, she becomes
a province of Austria, which to the Servians is
a repulsive Nirvana. The Belgians have been
defeated and for the time being have gone off
the map of Europe. The midst of such danger
is no time to stickle on a vote or a parliamentary
inquiry.

All the European countries are much more
familiar than we are in the United States with
capital decisions made by others than legisla-
tors. They have a tradition of royal preroga-
tive enhanced by the titles, distinctions, re-

28

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

wards, and promotions which are at the dis-
posal of the sovereign. In England treaties are
made by the ministry and submitted to Parlia-
ment for discussion after they have gone into
effect. In France, the ministry and the indi-
vidual ministers use large authority to bind the
individual even in time of peace. Imperial re-
scripts, royal orders, and ministerial minutes
have the force of law; and, so far forth, Euro-
peans do not feel the sense of usurpation that
would be roused by similar action in this
country.

Hence it is idle to suppose that the war may
result in the overthrow of European thrones
except perhaps in the Balkans. King George
and perhaps Victor Emmanuel of Italy are the
only royal sovereigns whose jobs might be en-
dangered ; because the difference between their
being kings and being simply an Englishman
or an Italian is already small. The Russians,
the Austrians, and the Germans have no na-
tional conception of a government without a
crown. The out-and-out Republicans in those
countries are few, though those who desire
democratic government are many. Whatever
the result in any of the European countries, it is
likely that either misfortune or victory will bind

29

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

closer together the sovereign and the people
who have labored and suffered together.

Will the war also enhance the representative
part of the various governments? That de-
pends in large degree upon the success of re-
publican France and essentially democratic
England. The world is bound to take notice of
the relative efficiency of popular and aristo-
cratic governments. The ordinary voter is not
a political philosopher, and if England and
France win, even by dispensing with the parlia-
mentary regime for the time being, the people
will feel that democracy has triumphed. They
will feel so rightly, because it wilLbe a proof
that countries brought up under popular gov-
ernment, in which the military and naval sys-
tems and preparations are subject to parlia-
mentary control, can hold their own against
armies officered, trained and directed by a more
nearly absolute system. Eome was no less a
republic after Cincinnatus returned to his plow.
Some republics have perished in similar crises,
because the commanders of the army and navy
have turned upon their creators; but nobody
has the slightest dread of a King Kitchener the
First or an .Empereur Joffre Premier, or a
Kaiser Hindenburg. It is a fine tribute to de-

30

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

mocracy that nobody dreads the Man on Horse-
back.

The success of the combination of Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Turkey would reaffirm
the Oriental type of government in the Turkish
Empire, in which the Young Turks, with all
their efforts, have not been able to establish an
actual parliamentary government, and are ruled
by a self -perpetuated cabal. Thereafter Tur-
key would stand toward Germany in the rela-
tion that Egypt occupied toward Great Britain
down to the present war — a nominally inde-
pendent nation, while actually in complete de-
pendence on its sponsor.

As for Austria-Hungary, it seems impossible
that the Slav elements in a reconstituted em-
pire should not gain more liberty and right of
self-expression than in times past. They de-
serve something, for they have inflicted a big
scare on the monarchy, yet have not revolted.
The present forms of democracy may be ex-
pected to continue in Germany ; for the German
Eeichstag with its manhood suffrage was or-
ganized by Bismarck so as to give to the smaller
states substantial representation in the empire.
Doubtless success in war would somewhat exalt
Prussianism, militarism, distinctions of classes

31

NN.

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

and military methods of government, which
seem to outsiders so contrary to the genuine
spirit of democracy. In any case no European
country is likely to change either from democ-
racy to monarchy or from monarchy to democ-
racy. The future trend from or towards democ-
racy will depend on who is the victor.

Although the United States of America seems
to be quite outside the danger zone, we have
something to learn from the experience of our
democratic neighbors abroad. First of all are
we wise in putting the immediate control of
our armies and navies into the hands of civil-
ians ? In our four external wars since 1789 and
in our Civil War, the commander-in-chief of the
armies and navies was in every case a civilian.
We have had several presidents who were
chosen because of their military reputation —
Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant — but not one
of them took the conduct of a war upon his
hands. Perhaps the American suspicion of
military men as more likely to make themselves
despots has no foundation; but civilian presi-
dents ought to have military and naval experts
upon whom they can throw direct responsibility.

Military experts have their failings, but it is
the business of their lives to study the military

32

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

needs of their country and to keep abreast of
the advance in military science and machinery.
The United States might well follow the exam-
ple of military countries like France and Eng-
land in frequently putting at the head of the
departments of war and navy men who are
trained in that specialty. In the long list of
secretaries of the navy since 1798, the only well-
known name of a naval commander is John
Eogers, who was ad interim for a few days in
1823. The first secretary of war, General Knox,
was appointed because he was a trained mili-
tary administrator; and Pickering, McHenry,
and Armstrong were military men. Winfield
Scott served about three weeks ad interim; but
Jefferson Davis was the only experienced sol-
dier to be appointed to the office except during
the troubled period of reconstruction when
Grant, Schofield and Sherman served for a few
weeks.

If the country absolutely cannot trust its
army to a soldier and its navy to a sailor, it
absolutely must put military men in places of
recognized responsibility. With great difficulty
the army has secured a general staff, the chief
of which, however, is supposed not to be in the
confidence of the administration. Congress has

33

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

refused the similar naval staff which is essen-
tial. Congress is not stingy. In the year pre-
vious to the present war, the United States
government spent more money for military and
naval purposes than any European power.
We may as well do in advance what Great
Britain has been compelled to do by the danger
of national ruin — we may as well select a man
of brains and intrust him with the task of reor-
ganizing the army, which sorely needs it. The
United States is protected by three thousand
miles of water and besides that, by the naval
first line of defense; after that by the use of
mines such as are protecting the coasts of Eng-
land, France and Germany from a landing of
enemies. Still those three countries have more
than twenty thousand men available to resist
an attack if the first and second lines were
broken ! France and Great Britain have far ex-
ceeded the United States in preparations, and
yet both were caught without a sufficient amount
of material and a clear knowledge of where the
human units were to come from. It was not
creditable to the kingdom of Great Britain and
the empire of India that 324,000,000 human be-
ings should have had at their disposal in a mo-
ment of supreme danger — leaving out of ac-

34

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY

<jount the garrisons in Africa and Asia — less
than 100,000 troops available for immediate
service. It is still less creditable to the United
States that 100,000,000 human beings should
rely upon a net effective force capable of being
thrown at any point on our eastern coast of less
than 25,000. We have the keenest desire to
maintain democracy in the western world, but
there can be no democracy of the United States
unless there is a United States capable of keep-
ing out hostile armies.

Above all American democracy must recog-
nize that armies are made up of soldiers. The
English territorials and colonial levies have
been molded in from four to six months into
good troops ; but if the Germans had been able,
as seemed not impossible, to land an army in
England, the United Kingdom would have col-
lapsed. Thereupon Paris would probably have
been captured. It is a crime which ought to
be punishable by confinement in a state's
prison, for the American people to rely upon
untrained volunteers for future wars. Their
quality is high and once properly drilled and
officered they could march, fight, and hold
trenches against any soldiers in the world. But
the experience of the United States in every

35

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

war from the Revolution to the Spanish War
has been that the refusal to give military train-
ing till the war is actually breaking out means
a fearful waste of treasure and of lives. The
wars of the future are going to be fought by
great masses of trained men. What American
democracy needs is simply to apply to its own
defense the principles of organization, expert
service, and efficiency which have made its rail-
roads and mines and factories so productive.
This favored country cannot go on indefinitely
enjoying the privileges of modern life without
taking account of the present changes in war-
fare and international relations.

n

AN ECONOMIC INTEEPEETATION OF
THE WAR

EDWIN E. A. SELIGMAN

There have been almost as many explanations
of the great war as there have been writers.
The explanations, moreover, have ranged over
a very wide field: personal jealousies, dynastic
differences, militarism, wounded pride, the en-
deavor to round out political boundaries, racial
antagonism, not to speak of such high-sounding
phrases as struggle for liberty, or fight for na-
tional existence — all these and many more have
been advanced for popular consumption. What
is lacking in them all, however, is a realiza-
tion of the fact that a conflict on this gigantic
scale must be explained on broader lines than
any of those mentioned. Wherever our sym-
pathies may lie in the present struggle, it be-
hooves us, as students of the philosophy of his-

37

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

tory, to take £ position far removed from the
petty interests of any of the contending par-
ties. Servia tells us that she is fighting for
independence; Austria maintains that she is
struggling against political disruption ; Russia
asserts that she is contending for the liberties
of the smaller Balkan States ; France urges that
she is endeavoring to restore freedom to her
lost provinces ; England puts in the foreground
resistance to the insolent pretensions of mili-
tarism and protection of small nationalities;
Germany claims a place in the sun; and Japan
— well, Japan is fighting to defend, large rather
than small nationalities, that is, to free China
from German domination. In each country,
with scarcely a single exception, there has been
a truly national uprising. Each of the contest-
ants considers that he is fighting for a holy
cause, and is thoroughly convinced not only of
the justice of his own claims but of the infamy
of his adversary's. Rarely in the world's his-
tory has there been presented such a spectacle
of genuine and universal enthusiasm penetrat-
ing every nook and cranny of the belligerent
countries, combined not only with an utter in-
ability on the part of each to understand the
position of the other, but also with a fierce and

38

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

implacable hatred between the more prominent
contestants.

But if, amid the actual clash of arms, it is
impossible for any of the belligerents to see the
situation in its true light, is there any excuse
for us, as neutrals and would-be philosophers,
to content ourselves with the explanations that
are born of mutual prejudice ! Is it not rather
incumbent upon us to realize that there are
deeper world forces at work which are respon-
sible for the present titanic conflict ; and if so,
is it not somewhat hasty to endeavor to appor-
tion praise or blame for what is the inevitable
result of world forces I

The starting-point of our analysis is the ex-
istence of nationality. Modern, as distinct from
medieval, and in part from ancient, political,
life, is erected on national foundations. The
city states of classic antiquity or of the Middle
Ages, although forming political entities, had
no direct relation to the facts of nationality.
There were in fact no nations : there were peo-
ples and races and states, but no nations. The
Greek states warred with each other, and there
was an Hellenic people ; but there was no Greek
nation. Borne overran the world, and the
Eoman Empire included many peoples and

39

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

races ; but we cannot properly speak of a Roman
nation. In the later Middle Ages, the Italian
and the German cities were often at war with
their neighbors ; but there was no Italian state
or German state, and still less an Italian nation
or a German nation. Modern political organi-
zation, on the other hand, is framed on national
lines ; and it is now universally recognized that
the creation in the seventeenth century of the
first great national states on the continent, as
well as the solidification of the British common-
wealth, was due to economic forces. It was now
that what the economists call the local or town
economy gave way to the national economy; it
was now that land as a predominant economic
force was replaced or supplemented by com-
mercial and industrial capital. Land in its very
nature is local; capital, in its essence, trans-
cends local bounds. The rise of the national
state was an accompaniment of the change in
economic conditions.

From that time to this the basis of national
life has been economic in character. I do not,
of course, desire for a moment to deny that
other factors have contributed. National con-
sciousness, is a subtle product of many forces,
among which geographical situation, common

40

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

language, inherited traditions and similar so-
cial and political ideals have all contributed to
perpetuate the racial characteristics which
differentiate one nation from another. That
racial and even religious differences have in
the past frequently led to sanguinary contests
goes without saying; and he would be ven-
turesome indeed who would dare to predict
that the future has not in store for the world
many a conflict referable to these same
causes.

If, however, we trace the history of the world
during the past few centuries we are struck by
the fact that, on the one hand, nations of dif-
ferent races have lived together in complete
amity, and that, on the other hand, separate
nations belonging to the same race and the same
religion have often indulged in the most vio-
lent conflicts. Examples like the war between
England and the United States, between Chile
and Peru, between Prussia and Austria, could
easily be multiplied. If in these cases the old
explanation of racial antagonism obviously does
not suffice ; if on the contrary the political con-
tests in such cases were due to more fundamen-
tal economic causes, is it not fair to assume that
as between nations of different races as well,

41

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

similar economic causes often lie at the bottom
of the controversy?

While economic considerations indeed do not
by any means explain all national rivalry, they
often illumine the dark recesses of history and
afford on the whole the most weighty and satis-
factory interpretation of modern national con-
tests which are not clearly referable to purely
racial antagonisms alone. The present strug-
gle is without doubt to be put into the same
category. To say, however, that nationalism in
its economic aspects is the root of the present
trouble is not yet adequate. For we have still
to explain why there should have been such a
recrudescence of nationalism of recent years.
On the contrary, it might be asked, if the mod-
ern age is essentially a capitalist age, why
should we not, in the face of the international
aspects of capitalism, have a growth of inter-
nationalism rather than of nationalism? Why
should we not be on the brink of that era of
universal free trade, of permanent peace and
of international brotherhood for which Adam
Smith and the Manchester School so valiantly
contended? Why is it that after the downfall of
the Mercantile System — which was nothing but
the economic side of the great national move-

42

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

ment of the seventeenth and the eighteenth cen-
turies— we should witness, hand in hand with
the undoubted growth of international inter-
course and mutual understanding, the revival
of the so-called Neo-mercantilism, as found a
generation ago in almost all the continental
nations of Europe as well as in the United
States? And why should we at this very mo-
ment be in the presence of an almost universal
emergence of national consciousness which
threatens to destroy well-nigh everything that
has been won during the nineteenth century,
and which in its deplorable aspects is typified
no less by the Oxford pamphlets of the English
scientists than by the fulminations of the
German professors or the decisions of the
French learned societies ? "What are the world
forces which compel human beings, almost per-
haps against their will, to act as do the foremost
representatives of our present-day civiliza-
tion?

If I read history aright, the forces that are
chiefly responsible for the conflicts of political
groups are the economic conditions affecting
the group growth. These conditions have of
course assumed a different aspect in the course
of history. The first and most obvious reason

43

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

leading to an expansion of a political group is
the desire to insure a food supply for the grow-
ing population. It is today a fairly well estab-
lished fact that the forces which set in move-
ment the migration of the peoples from Asia
to Europe and which were responsible for the
so-called irruption of the barbarians were pri-
marily the inability to maintain the flocks and
herds, owing to the gradual desiccation of the
original home, and the necessity of seeking
fresh pastures abroad. We have recently been
taught that the secret of the implacable enmity
between Eome and Carthage was the desire to
retain Sicily as the granary of the world. The
need of an adequate food supply is the first con-
cern of every political entity.

The next step in the economic basis of po-
litical expansion is the desire to develop the
productive capacity of the community. This al-
ways assumes one of two forms. Where agri-
cultural methods are still primitive and agri-
cultural capital insignificant, the system of cul-
tivation is necessarily extensive. As a conse-
quence, and especially in those countries where
slavery has developed, the need of a continual
supply of fresh land as a basis for profitable
slave cultivation, becomes imperative. It is this

44

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

fact which explains the Mexican War in the
history of the United States, as well as number-
less conflicts of former ages in other parts of
the world.

On the other hand, where agriculture ha&
been supplemented by an active commercial in-
tercourse, and especially in the case of coun-
tries contiguous to the sea, the desire for the in-
crease of wealth based on commercial profits*
has in the past everywhere led to a struggle
for the control of the trade routes. From the
time of Phoenicia down to the domination re-
spectively of the Hanse towns and of Venice,,
the grandeur and decay of civilization may al-
most be written in terms of sea power.

All these changes, however, were anterior to-
the growth of modern nationalism. What, then,
are the points in which modern struggles differ
from their predecessors?

From this point of view it may be said that
the first stage of modern nationalism represents
an analogy rather than a contrast; and that it
is only in the later stages that the real differ-
ences are to be sought. In the first stage of
modern nationalism we find in fact a combina-
tion of the three forces which, as we have seen,
played so important a role in former times.

45

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

The closing of the land route to India,
through the Mohammedan conquest of Con-
stantinople, and the discovery of the New
World were the two chief factors which led to
the development of nationality in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. It was at this time
that the great colonial empires of Spain, Por-
tugal, Holland, France and England were
formed. The struggle to protect the economic
interests involved in the colonial system led
necessarily to an organization on a national
scale. The real basis of the early colonial sys-
tem, however, was the attempt to secure either
raw materials for the incipient manufactures
of the mother country, or crude articles like
the spices from the East Indies, or treasure
from America. The early colonial system,
which itself marks the transition from medieval
feudalism to modern capitalism, thus represents
an attempt to increase the area of the supply
of certain kinds of food, or the endeavor to
expand the basis of productivity by the acquisi-
tion of fresh land calculated to yield raw ma-
terials or, finally, the effort to secure what was
considered the essence of wealth itself in the
.shape of the precious metals. In order to ac-
complish each of these results, a great navy

46

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

was necessary, and such a navy could be pro-
vided and maintained only along national lines.
Before long, however, the accumulation of
capital derived from the profits of the colonial
empire found its chief utilization in an appli-
cation to industry; and as this capital grad-
ually percolated through business enterprise,
the whole form of economic organization was
changed. In the place of the medieval guild
system where the same individual bought the
raw material, fashioned the commodity, and
sold the product to the consumer, there now
grew up what was later on known as the do-
mestic system, that is, the system where the
first and third stages of the process were in
the hands of capitalists who could both buy the
raw material and sell the product on a large
scale, while the second stage in the process was
still carried on by the individual workman in
his own home. The emphasis was consequently
now put upon the protection of this national
industry against its rivals, and the colonies
henceforth became important, not so much as
sources of raw material as, on the other hand,
favorable markets for the commodities manu-
factured in the mother country. The so-called
Mercantile System was badly named: because

47

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

although it is true that the prosperity of both
colonies and mother country depended on the
interchange of products carried on through
overseas commerce, the essence of the system
was the development of domestic industry on a
national scale. The great wars of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, fought in or-
der to control the sea and to expand the colonial
empire, all had in view the development of the
nascent industry on capitalist lines. Protec-
tion of industry was, therefore, the character-
istic mark of nationalism during this period.

With the advent of the nineteenth century,
however, Great Britain was ready to enter upon
the next stage of development. Having built
up her industry by the most extreme and ruth-
less system of protection that the world has
ever known, and having wrested a large part of
her world empire from her competitors, Eng-
land now found it to her interest to go over
from a system of protection to one of free trade.
The free-trade movement, as is almost always
the case with great economic transitions, was
only ostensibly in the interests of the consumer,
but actually in the interests of the producer.
Thanks to a favorable conjuncture of events fa-
miliar to all scholars, the industrial revolution

48

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

—which means the complete application of cap-
italism to every stage of the productive process
— took place first in England, and thus consoli-
dated her position of industrial primacy. But
as free trade and universal peace were obvi-
ously the means best calculated to perpetuate
this industrial monopoly, we find Great Britain
from this time onward desirous of living in
amity with all those countries which had for-
merly been her rivals, but which were now hope-
lessly distanced in the industrial race and which
were henceforth to be regarded as the most
desirable markets for the output of British fac-
tories.

With the gradual spread of the factory sys-
tem, however, into the continental countries, a
new situation was engendered. In the first
place, economic pressure upon Germany and
Italy gradually resulted in the creation of a
political nationality in order to mobilize the
economic forces on a national scale. As a con-
sequence, we find emanating from those coun-
tries, as soon as nationality was achieved, pre-
cisely the same movement of protection to in-
dustry which had characterized the Mercantile
System several centuries earlier. Just as na-
tionalism was the real basis of the early Mer-

49

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

cantilism, so this movement now came to be
called Neo-mer cantilism. In France, indeed,
where, as we know, nationalism had been
achieved at an earlier date, the new move-
ment assumed a slightly different form,
namely, that of competition for the mar-
kets of the world. It was this competi-
tion for the world market which now, after
the period of quiescence and universal good will
during the sixties and seventies, led in the
eighties to the new movement for the in-
crease of the colonial empire on the part of both
England and France, and which at one time
almost threatened to bring those two great na-
tions into collision in Africa. Moreover, the
advent of the industrial revolution in Germany
and the transition from the domestic to the
factory system immensely increased the tempo
of the evolution. Whereas in the first decade
after the formation of the German Empire the
chief emphasis was put by Bismarck upon pro-
tection, now towards the close of the century
the national industry had been built up to such
an extent that Germany soon joined France in
competing for the world market against Eng-
land.

This transition from a period of protection
50

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

to a period of competition for markets would
not, however, have sufficed to bring about the
present gigantic struggle. The most important
phase of modern industrial capitalism still re-
mains to be explained. After national industry
has been built up through a period of protec-
tion, and after the developed industrial coun-
tries have replaced the export of raw materials
by the export of manufactured commodities,
there comes a time when the accumulation of
industrial and commercial profits is such that
a more lucrative use of the surplus can be made
abroad in the less developed countries than at
home with the lower rates usually found in an
older industrial system. In other words, the
emphasis is now transferred from the export
of goods to the export of capital.

England reached this stage a generation or
two ago. For England, as is well known, has
largely financed not only North and South
America, but also many other parts of the world
as well. In fact, the chief explanation of Eng-
land 's immense excess of imports is to be found
in the profits from her surplus capital annually
invested over the seas. Because of her later
transition to the factory system, France fol-
lowed at a subsequent period, but even then

51

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

only to an inconsiderable degree. For in the
first place, the virtual cessation in the growth
of population prevented any such increase of
output as in England, although naturally aug-
menting the per capita wealth, and especially
the prosperity of the peasant. And in the sec-
ond place, since the French are far more con-
servative, largely for the reasons just men-
tioned, their annual surplus, such as it is, has
been invested chiefly in contiguous countries
like Spain and Belgium, and later on, for obvi-
ous reasons, in Eussia. Thus France did not
develop into any serious competitor of Eng-
land in the capital market of the .world. On
the other hand, the significant aspect of recent
development is the entrance of Germany upon
this new stage of development. The industrial
progress of Germany has been so prodigious
and the increase of her population so great,
that with the opening years of the present
century she also began on a continually larger
scale to export capital as well as goods. It
was this attempt to enter the preserves hith-
erto chiefly in the hands of Great Britain
that really precipitated the trouble. For if
the growth of national wealth depends upon
the tempo of the accumulation of national

52

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

profits, and if the rate of profits is, as
we have seen, far greater in the application
of capital to industrially undeveloped coun-
tries, it is clear that the struggle for the con-
trol of the international industrial market is
even more important than was the previous
competition for the commercial market.

Other and more familiar phases of the eco-
nomic struggle have no doubt played their role
in the various countries. It is indubitable, for
instance, that Russia, still a predominantly
agricultural community, is endeavoring to se-
cure Constantinople partly in order to obtain
an unrestricted vent for her wheat, partly in
order to acquire a port which will not be ice-
bound for the greater part of the year, and
partly in order further to consolidate the basis
of her national wealth. Austria, which is some-
what further advanced in industrial develop-
ment, is assuredly interested in preventing in-
terference with her economic hegemony in the
Balkan States. Germany, because of her close
union with Austria, is almost equally con-
cerned in resisting the Russian pretensions.
France, finally, would naturally seek to recover
her lost provinces whenever the opportunity
for an effective cooperation with Russia pre-
53

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

sented itself. So that those who desire to inter-
pret the war on the lines of an economic strug-
gle between the Teuton and the Eussian civi-
lizations would find no little basis for their con-
tentions. All these, however, would not suffice
to explain the one thing which needs elucida-
tion : Why has the present contest attained the
dimensions of a veritable world war, and why
has it become clear, not only to the dispassion-
ate observer, but to the contestants themselves,
that the real struggle is between England and
Germany!

If, however, Germany and England are the
real antagonists, the true interpretation of the
war must rest on this antagonism. From this
point of view it is significant that England
should now for more than three centuries have
fought her way up with successive rivals in turn.
In the seventeenth century, England's chief
fight was against Holland ; in the eighteenth cen-
tury her greatest antagonist was France, and
now, finally, she has locked horns with Germany.
To the student of economic history, the present
war, however, was just as inevitable as its pred-
ecessors ; in this case, as in the others, it seems
unnecessary to advance the minor explanations
which are currently found. England's war with

54

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

Holland was a struggle for the control of the
seas as a prelude to the expansion of national
industry. England's wars with France were
contests for colonial empire resting on a com-
petition of markets for goods; England's war
with Germany marks the final stage of a com-
petition involving not simply the export of
goods, but the export of capital.

While Germany was in the first stage of eco-
nomic nationalism she took relatively no inter-
est in colonial expansion, but was busily en-
gaged in developing her industrial power and
in utilizing to that end the same weapon of pro-
tection which had served Great Britain in such
good stead in preceding centuries. With the
consolidation and development of industrial
enterprise Germany soon entered upon the sec-
ond stage of economic nationalism, that of com-
peting for the markets of the world. The ex-
port of commodities thus led naturally to co-
lonial expansion, as a result of which the early
Bismarckian policy was reversed. With the be-
ginning of the present century, however, Ger-
many entered upon the third stage of economic
nationalism, supplementing the export of goods
by the export of capital. Now it was that there
emerged the real rivalry with England. Now

55

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

for the first time there came into view the pos-
sibility of the financial control of large sections
of the world, of which Morocco and Asiatic Tur-
key are good examples. These efforts for finan-
cial control represented a penetration of back-
ward countries by a developed capitalism — a
peaceful penetration if possible, but a penetra-
tion at all costs. For Germany was learning
the lesson from England's experience, and was
fully aware of the fact that a financial or cap-
italistic domination is the surest avenue which
leads toward commercial growth and which
renders probable the greatest multiplication
of profits.

This consideration seems of slight weight.
Is it not true, it might be urged, that capital is
invested in foreign countries by people of all
nationalities, and that the stock of modern cor-
porations pursuing their activities in any coun-
try is distributed among investors of all finan-
cial countries? This criticism, however, does
not touch the core of the matter. For in the
first place corporation policy is not influenced
by the minority stockholders at all ; and it is de-
termined, so far as nationality is concerned, by
that of the controlling directorate. The fact
that the shares of the South African mines were

56

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

traded in on the Berlin stock exchange did not
affect the close connection of the British min-
ing corporations with the Boer War. And in
the second place, the political influence which
goes with financial authority is itself respon-
sible for all manner of economic advantages, di-
rect and indirect. It would be tedious as well
as unnecessary to recite in detail the countless
benefits that England has derived from India,
or more recently from Egypt, and the number-
less subtle ways in which she has contrived, just
as every other nation would have done, to
retain most of these benefits for herself. For
who will in any way doubt that under modern
conditions political preferment is the real open
sesame to economic advancement! We have
only to point to what is taking place at this
very moment between China and Japan.

The German statesmen were simply learning
their lesson from the vast book of English ex-
perience. The German economists were, almost
to a man, united in the belief that, while it may
not always be true that trade naturally follows
the flag, it is clearly not open to doubt that
political influence paves the way for economic
superiority and vastly enhances the opportuni-
ties for economic preferment. It was primarily

57

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

to augment this political influence and to clinch
these expected financial and commercial advan-
tages that a large navy, with coaling places and
stations throughout the world, became a neces-
sity. This attempt, however, necessarily con-
stituted a challenge to England's virtual mo-
nopoly of sea power and engendered in both
countries the state of mind which has finally re-
sulted in the present conflict.

To say, then, that either Great Britain or
Germany is responsible for the present war,
seems to involve a curiously short-sighted view
of the situation. Both countries, nay, all the
countries of the world, are subject to the sweep
of these mighty forces over which they have but
slight control, and by which they are one and
all pushed on with an inevitable fatality. Eng-
land, no less than Germany, Austria no less
than Eussia, cannot escape this nemesis.
How idle is it, therefore, to speculate as to
what the particular torch may have been which
set fire to the conflagration ! How bootless is it
to attempt to estimate from the blue book or
the white book or the yellow book which states-
man or set of statesmen is responsible for the
particular action that led to the declaration of
war ! If the war could have been averted now,

58

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

it was bound to break out in the more or less
immediate future. Germany like England,
Austria like Eussia, Italy like Servia, each was
simply following the same law which is found
in all life from the very beginnings of the indi-
vidual cell — the law of expansion or of self-
preservation.

It is a curious fact that no one should hitherto
have attempted to explain the paradox of in-
creasing internationalism combined with the
recrudescence of the newer nationalism which
we are witnessing today. And yet, in the light
of the preceding analysis, the explanation is
simple. In the earlier days of civilization the
stranger was the enemy because the economic
unit was the local unit. With the slow growth
of trade, these barriers were gradually broken
down and the feelings of enmity attenuated,
until, as in the Eoman Empire, natural law de-
veloped as the law common to all peoples. In
the same way, in the later Middle Ages, the
local antagonisms were disappearing before
commercial progress, until we even find dream-
ers who several centuries ago welcomed the
speedy advent of the universal republic and
proclaimed the impending reign of a world
citizenship. As we have seen, however, the cre-

59

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

ation of industrial capitalism and the birth of
nations in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies consolidated the economic interests along
national lines. While individuals now consid-
ered themselves citizens of a country rather
than of a town, national antagonisms became
stronger than the older local antagonisms. Yet
after the first fierce onset of national power the
forces of internationalism began to assert them-
selves, and international law was born, although
never becoming a very lusty infant. A little
later, however, when Great Britain had com-
pleted the first stage of nationalism through
protection, it was so clearly to her interest to
emphasize the ties that bind nations together,
that her philosophers and economists found for
a time a more or less ready response to their
cosmopolitan teachings among those countries
which were not yet quite prepared to start on
the road of nationalism. Thus it was that by
the middle of the nineteenth century the pre-
cepts of Adam Smith were now taken up by
Cobden and Bright, and were reechoed in Ger-
many, in Italy, in Eussia, and in other indus-
trially undeveloped parts of the world — with
the one significant exception of the United
States, which, having entered after the Civil

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AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

War upon her first real stage of nationalism,
turned a deaf ear to the preachings of the Man-
chester School.

With the progress of the industrial revolu-
tion in the United States, however, and with
her gradual transition from an exporter of food
to an exporter of finished products, the United
States was ready to take its place side by side
with England in preaching the gospel of cosmo-
politanism and good will, and in emphasizing
the forces which make for the growth of inter-
national trade. Had all the nations of the
world been on the same level of economic prog-
ress, the very existence of capital as an inter-
national force would have lent a mighty sup-
port to the spread of good feeling and inter-
national fellowship. Unfortunately, it was pre-
cisely this equality that was lacking. In the
absence of such a situation, the exploitation of
the capitalistically undeveloped countries by
the few nations which had reached the third
stage of economic nationalism, that of the ex-
port of capital rather than of goods, became
the keynote of a new struggle. Thus it is that
modern capital, which on the one hand works*
toward real internationalism, peace and public
morality and which will ultimately be able to*

61

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

accomplish its beneficent results, is at the same
time responsible for the weakening of inter-
national law and the revival of a more con-
spicuous and determined nationalism because
of the greater prize to be achieved and the
fiercer struggle necessary to win it.

In the political life of the world today we
see the same forces at -work as in all life from
the very beginning — the forces which we sum
up under the terms of the competitive and the
cooperative process, the individualistic and the
collective movement. Just as the animal or-
ganism was built up by a combination of the
struggle between the cells and cooperation
among them ; just as human society has devel-
oped through the advance of the individual
working hand in hand with the growth of the
group ; so the world society that is slowly com-
ing to pass is evolving in obedience on the one
hand to the competitive spirit of national strug-
gle, and on the other, to the cooperative forces
of internationalism — both of them inherent in
the modern factory system, resting upon indus-
trial capitalism. At certain stages in the
world's history the one set of forces seems to be
in the ascendency, at another stage the opposite
set ; but in reality they are complementary ancl

62

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

are always working together. It is the indus-
trial revolution with the factory system and the
growth of capitalism which has set in motion
the mighty forces both of world cooperation and
of national antagonism.

In the light of what has been said, the pres-
ent and the future of the United States form
an especially interesting subject for considera-
tion. When this nation was born it was for
some decades weak and puny. It was the genius
of Alexander Hamilton which realized the true
economic basis of nationality and which at-
tempted to start the country on its real career.
The gradual dominance of American politics-
by the South, the economic basis of which was
agricultural rather than industrial, was, how-
ever, responsible for good as well as for evil.
The emphasis upon states' rights indeed almost
destroyed the Union; but the need of a wider
basis of productivity under the extensive sys-
tem of slave labor was responsible for the Mex-
ican War and the rounding out of our imperial
domain. It was only with the completion of the
Civil War that this country as a whole entered
on the first real stage of economic nationalism.
Thus it was that the United States, following
the example of Great Britain a century before^

63

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

"built up an enormous industrial power through
a system of national protection. We are now
just beginning to reach the stage attained by
Great Britain three generations ago, the stage,
namely, of transition from the export of agri-
cultural products to that of the import of agri-
cultural produce and the export of manufac-
tured products. We have not yet reached, and
it may well be at least another generation be-
fore we reach, the third stage of economic na-
tionalism, that of the export of capital on a
large scale as the typical form of profitable
enterprise. When we reach that third stage,
which, as we have seen, carries 'with it the
struggle for the exploitation of the relatively
undeveloped parts of the world, our real trial
will come, and the true conflict between nation-
alism and internationalism will begin. Then,
and then for the first time since the develop-
ment of our national forces, shall we have an
opportunity to test the foundation of our his-
toric friendship with Great Britain. Then, and
then for the first time, will the situation arise
when Great Britain, instead of being bound
solidly to us by the bonds of her financial in-
terest in us, will face the United States as a
rival, a rival on the international market for

64

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

the control of the capitalistically undeveloped
countries. "Whether by that time the forces of
internationalism will prevail and good will and
peace continue, or whether, on the other hand,
the United States will be impelled, perhaps
against her will, to take the place now occupied
by Germany, can be foretold by no one.

Finally it may be asked what is to be the
outcome of all this? Are wars to go on for-
ever? Is the present struggle, gigantic though
it be, simply a forerunner of wars still more
gigantic? Or, on the other hand, are the
dreams of our pacificists to become true, and is
universal peace to be realized?

If there is any truth in the preceding analy-
sis, both of these things are coming in the full-
ness of time. That is, we are to have more
wars, but we are to have ultimate peace. The
reason that we are to have more wars is simply
because of the fact that what we call the indus-
trial revolution is in reality only a gradual
change, and that this change is but slowly per-
meating the world. That part of the earth's
surface which is occupied by countries with a
highly developed industrial capitalism is rela-
tively small. Although capitalism is spreading
throughout the West and South of the United

65

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

States and effecting a lodgment in Canada and
Japan and Kussia, it is only beginning in the
rest of Asia and Africa as well as in South
America and Australia. As long as there are
vast stretches of territory still waiting to be
developed, so long will they prove to be a lure
to the industrially advanced nations of the
world. England, and to a much less extent
France, have until recently provided this capi-
tal. Whatever be the outcome of the present
war, however, nothing, if our analysis is cor-
rect, can check the ultimate tendency of coun-
tries like Germany, and later on Japan and
the United States, to be followed still later by
other countries, to secure their share of these
lucrative opportunities. Whatever may be the
immediate results of the present situation, or
with whatever great success the attractive and
even noble ideal of an imperial British federa-
tion may be realized, England can scarcely ex-
pect in the long run to retain the monopoly or
the domination which it has achieved and which
it built up during the nineteenth century as a
result of the lucky accident of being the first
country to experience the industrial revolution
and to exploit her coal supply. England's pri-
macy was no doubt deserved, and is assuredly

66

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

welcome to many of us; but from the point of
view of world forces, it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that it also is destined to disappear.
Eome was able to create a world empire and to
maintain it for several centuries because there
was no economic expansiveness in the outlying
constitutent members of the empire. Great
Britain will find it far more difficult to create
a world empire permanently dominating all
other countries, for the simple reason that in-
dustrial capitalism is destined to overrun the
world. Even today England is able to retain
India only by strict commercial control and by
sedulously preventing the growth of any na-
tional industry in that huge empire.

The above forecast as to the probability of
the continuance of war rests indeed on an as-
sumption that may be challenged. It might be
urged that civilization is progressing so rapidly
that the nations of the future will realize the
economic waste, the inexpressible horror, and
the irreparable ravages of war, and that com-
mon decency and ordinary humanity will impel
the world into an abandonment of what is essen-
tially the mark of savagery. However deeply
and even passionately we may desire such a
consummation, it must be confessed, in all hu-

67

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

mility, there seems to be slight warrant for its
expectation. If indeed the chief nations of the
world were to abandon all efforts to secure sel-
fish advantage for themselves; if an interna-
tional pact could be arranged so that each na-
tion would cheerfully divide its opportunities
with its neighbors, and would welcome the en-
trance of continually new claimants into the
agreement ; if, in other words, generosity were
to replace selfishness in national arrangements,
the outlook might, indeed, be very different.
But with the frailty of human nature, as it un-
fortunately still exists ; with the undoubted na-
tional consciousness which is suffused at pres-
ent with the distinctively modern emphasis
upon the importance of the material basis of
the higher life; and above all with the oppor-
tunity afforded to each nation to reach out for
its share of almost boundless prosperity by
grasping the new opportunities afforded to
modern capitalism, it seems hopeless to expect
any effective resistance to a temptation which
is so compelling, so illimitable, and so promis-
ing of success under the conditions of actual
economic life. No more striking illustration of
the real forces that dominate the foreign policy
of modern nations can be found than the vain

68

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

effort recently made by certain Italian states-
men to repress the popular feeling and to pre-
vent their country from joining a war the hor-
rors of which had been for months clearly be-
fore the eyes of all. Pacificism seems destined,
for the near future at least, to remain an unat-
tainable ideal; for it is both blind and deaf to
the effect of modern capitalism in accentuating,
rather than attenuating, the lure of the eco-
nomic life.

But if, then, we are likely to see during the
next few generations wars on an even greater
scale than the present one, will this endure for-
ever ! Not if our analysis is correct. For when
once the time comes that industrial capital will
have spread to the uttermost parts of the earth ;
when China and India and Africa and the rest
will all have been as fully supplied with capital
as are now Great Britain and Belgium and Ger-
many; when, in other words, the industrial
revolution will have permeated the world, then
the economic basis will have been laid for two
supreme events. In the first place, there will
no longer be any exploitation of the backward
countries, because there will be no industrially
undeveloped countries to exploit. Then the
whole world will be divided up into a series of

69

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

empires, perhaps a dozen or more, on a level
of comparative equality economically, and
therefore politically. With such a relative
equality of industrial development, and in the
absence of any important foreign territory to
be exploited, each nation will then find it to its
interest to develop what is best within itself in
order to carry on a peaceful exchange of com-
modities with the other nations. Then, and
then only, will Adam Smith's dream be realized,
namely, that each nation will be able to utilize
its own climatic and other economic advantages
in a peaceful struggle with other nations.
Then, and then only, will universal free trade
become profitable to all, and the rule of inter-
national amity become enduring, Then, and
then only, shall we have the secure foundation
laid for the world republic and for the coopera-
tion of all races and of all peoples toward a
common ideal.

In the second place is the industrial revo-
lution. Just as the industrial revolution
changed England from an aristocracy to a
democracy, just as the industrial revolution in
the United States is re-creating a new South on
a democratic basis, so the spread of the indus-
trial revolution will bring democracy through-

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AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

out the world and will enable every country to
turn its efforts to the ideals of a political and a
social democracy. Then we shall not have to
spend more money for dreadnoughts than we
do for social progress.

To predict how soon this change will come
about is idle. All that can be said is that the
change is in progress, and that in this change
there seems to lie the chief hope of the world 's
future. What the particular economic organi-
zation of the future is to be, it is not the pur-
pose of these pages to discuss. My point will
have been attained if we clearly keep in mind
the inevitable spread of industrial capitalism,
irrespective of the fact by whom the capital is
to be controlled. Capitalism on an interna-
tional scale may well lead during the next few
decades to a strengthening of certain forms of
international cooperation and fellowship, so
ardently desired by all forward-looking think-
ers. But industrial capitalism will not have
completed its allotted task until it shall have
brought about the reign of national economic
equality which alone will serve as the basis of an
enduring internationalism. Whatever may be
the influence of the other factors, ponderable or
imponderable, that contribute to civilization, it

71

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

is scarcely open to doubt that the dominant
forces which are actually molding history to-
day are primarily economic in character, and
are as a consequence intimately associated with
the great transition that is at present taking
place in the economic organization of the world.
Unless the present conflict is studied in the light
of these world forces, its lesson will not have
been read aright.

Ill

THE CKISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION
FBANKLIN H. GIDDINGS

For two or three months after the war began,
everybody was asking or telling who was to
blame. The primitive human instinct to hold
some one personally accountable had asserted
itself in full strength. Then, for two or three
months more, every one plunged into a discus-
sion of the " causes " of the war. Agreement
about causes proved to be no more possible
than unanimity in fixing responsibility. Doubt-
less in his heart every one felt bitterly toward
some potentate or people, while in his intel-
lectual centers he may have cherished a firm
conviction that his own theory of causation
was the only true one. Perhaps everybody was
right, and only couldn't prove it. You know
what the Scriptures say — or was it Don
Marquis 1—

73

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

All the wicked cities

In the Vale of Siddim
Thought of things they shouldn't do —

Then they went and did 'em!

Like enough this simple hypothesis is as far as
we shall ever get in explaining how the trouble
began.

Of late, the speculations of the thoughtful
have turned toward the future. How will the
world henceforth be different because this ca-
lamity came upon it? Civilization is set back
we all believe — but to what extent and in just
what way? The destruction of commerce and
the loss of life every one sees and thinks he
understands. The waste of capital is realized
by some. The irreparable loss to art and to
science is appreciated by the few. And beyond
this destruction, which is immediate and al-
ready is felt, processes of selection and rear-
rangement have been set going which will con-
tinue to affect the quality and the happiness
of mankind throughout future time. May I ask
your attention to one or two considerations,
rather elementary I fear, touching these trans-
forming changes that are likely to continue.

It is commonly held fTiaf. modern V/"" undoes
74

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

fhft wnrk of a. hfvnpficent natural selection. The
best, we say, are killed ; and the race must be
perpetuated by its weaklings.

If this is true, or in so far as it may be true,
a war so gigantic as the one now being waged
must be regarded as the most appalling calam-
ity that has overtaken mankind from the begin-
ning. Gains of half a million years have been
buried in the trenches, or withered by the fire
of artillery. Surely a hypothesis so terrible
should be subjected to searching scrutiny before
it is accepted.

It is true, of course, that war takes the phys-
ically fit, and takes more of the young in the
prime and vigor of life than of the old. It is
true, also, that death takes a heavy toll of the
bravest and most intellectual of these young
men, whose courage and abilities have won them
commissions as officers; who, whatever orders
from above may be, spare their men whenever
they can, and recklessly sacrifice themselves. If
this were the whole story, we could not escape
the pessimistic conclusion. But there is some-
thing more to be said.

How many of the men who fall in battle die
childless, and how many leave offspring! Who
knows I Yet plainly, until this question can be

75

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

answered it is absurd to assume that the course
of natural selection is diverted by war. The
one fact that can be affirmed with certainty is
that a large proportion of the victims of battle
do leave children, legitimate or illegitimate.
Since this present war began, a large number of
hastened marriages have been made in all the
belligerent countries; and the certainty of an
extraordinary birth-rate in the summer of 1915
has necessitated measures, both governmental
and voluntary, for rendering extraordinary as-
sistance to destitute young mothers.

Again, the men who are killed in battle even
in the present war, which probably is excep-
tional in this respect, are not the only Important
harvest of death. In all wars of which we have
record, disease has claimed more victims than
bullets. And in death by disease there is always
natural selection. While cholera, typhus, ty-
phoid and pneumonia take the strong no less
than the weak, no one, I suppose, will deny
that when all allowances have been made it is
the relatively weak or non-resisting that are
carried off in larger numbers.

These considerations surely put a question-
mark against the assertion that war gives us
an adverse natural selection. And these con-

76

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

siderations are only the more obvious ones.
Another, and probably far more important one,
although we almost never hear it mentioned, is
the intensified struggle for existence among the
non-combatants. Hardships are multiplied,
food is inadequate, doctors and nurses are at
the front, anxiety and sorrow bring tortured
nerves to the breaking-point. Under these cir-
cumstances, natural selection has its way to a
degree approaching the remorseless elimination
of the relatively weak which we are accustomed
to associate with the jungle, or at least with
savagery and barbarism.

In particular, women and children suffer.
It is most curious that those who uncritically
take for granted the adverse natural selection
of war never let their imagination wander
beyond the battlefield and the male combatants
assembled there. Would it not be well, before
accepting any conclusion on this subject, to ask
for the death-rates of women and children dur-
ing war years and immediately after? Unfor-
tunately we lack adequate statistics ; but what
scientific man can ignore the plain implication
of the facts that are available! The death-rate
of women and children in such times is so much
higher than in normal times of peace that it i

77

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

impossible for any observer to be unaware of
it, although he has no figures — as impossible as
it would be to be unaware of an epidemic or of
an extraordinary succession of funeral proces-
sions in a village street.

With some diffidence I venture to offer as my
own conclusion a bit of pure skepticism. I seri-
ously doubt whether war greatly affects the
normal course of natural selection. In any
case, the assertion that it does, is not proven.

Natural selection in the strict biological
meaning of the term is closely simulated by a
selection always going on in the realm of human
habits, ideas, inventions, morals, laws, and po-
litical institutions. The wiser students of social
evolution do not undertake to say how far these
phenomena of behavior and relationship are
products of unconscious activities, how far of
man's conscious planning and reasoned en-
deavor. Either way they are products of the
struggle for existence carried on collectively —
by human beings living in groups, facing com-
mon dangers, making common cause, working
together.

As the individual struggle for existence is
successful for some and fateful for others,

78

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

thereby eliminating not only the unsuccessful
individuals themselves, but also in the course
of time whole varieties or kinds ; so the group
or collective struggle — successful often for
whole aggregations and fateful for others — has
from the appearance of mankind on the earth
until now been destroying habits, purposes, cus-
toms and policies correlated with unsuccess,
and preserving and establishing policies, rela-
tions and habits correlated with success.

Whether war or peace in the long run plays
the larger part in social selection is another
question, upon which the wiser students of hu-
man progress will not offer too positive an
opinion. But it is not rash to say that every "N
war has destroyed many things beside human /
life and material wealth, beyond possibility of I
recovery or reproduction. Often the destruc- (
tion is unobserved for years, or even genera- \
tions^ after hostilities have fipas^. The habit )
or institution so eliminated is not usually as
conspicuous as American Negro slavery; but
the passing of uncounted social phenomena of
lesser magnitude may have cumulative results
quite as important as the crushing of any one
great institution.

With all its uncertainties, history is less
79

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

doubtful than prophecy, and it is easier to see
the process of social selection in historical
retrospect than to visualize its future conse-
quences. Nevertheless, a war has this merit as
a datum for intellectual speculation : it is a two-
sided conflict — it presents alternatives. It was
not easily possible to be muddle-headed about
what would happen if the Saracens or the Huns
conquered Europe ; about what would happen if
Great Britain subdued the American colonies,
or the Southern Confederacy made good its
secession.

The present war is more than a conflict of
nations. It is a struggle between different civi-
lizations. It will not result in the destruction of
either civilization, or perhaps of any nation,
even Belgium. But the outcome will give to one
civilization or the other a long lead. It will
discourage, handicap, and presently destroy
many of the factors or elements that make up
the defeated civilization, imparting to it its
characteristic qualities.

It is the boast of Germany that her people
are homogeneous, a relatively pure stock. The
claim may be allowed if we confine attention to
the strictly European elements that are blended

80

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

in German blood, properly so called. The boast
is altogether untrue if the entire population of
the empires in question is taken into account;
and this discrimination, as will appear, is the
key to any thoroughgoing explanation of the
profound difference between German civiliza-
tion and the civilizations of France and Eng-
land.

By comparison with the German and Aus-
trian empires, the allied nations are an old and
well-ripened blend of all four of the great Euro-
pean stocks. These stocks are: the Mediterra-
nean— long-headed, olive-skinned, dark-eyed
and dark-haired ; the Baltic — long-headed, fair,
yellow-haired and blue-eyed; the Alpine — broad-
headed, chestnut-haired and gray-eyed, a prod-
uct of the crossing of Mediterraneans with
round-heads from the Armenian parts of Asia,
who made their way across Europe along the
southern foothills of the Alps; and the Danu-
bians — broad-headed, florid, red-haired and
gray-eyed, a product of the crossing of Baltics
with Asian round-heads that pushed across
Europe by way of the Danube and Rhine val-
leys, the northern foothills of the Alps and so
into Belgium and England, where they became
historically known as Belgae and Britons. The

81

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

French and English have, of course, in their
composition a much higher percentage of Medi-
terranean blood than the Germans have. While
it is not quite accurate to identify this blood
with the so-called Latin race, it is a physical
basis of the Latin culture. In the Austrian
and German empires, on the other hand, there
are large groups of Asian elements far less
well blended with European stocks than is any
element found in the population of France or
of England. The Lapps, Finns, and Slavs with
which German blood is crossed in Prussia, the
Esthonians, Magyars and Huns which have
managed to keep separate from the Germans in
Austria, have, all in all, made the population of
the German and the Austrian empires much
more of a merely mechanical mixture of unas-
similable, or at any rate unassimilated, factors
than are the populations of France and Eng-
land.

No argument is needed to prove that popula-
tions composed of elements that neither amal-
gamate to any great extent through inter-mar-
riage, nor assimilate mentally or morally
through imitation of one another's habits, ac-
ceptance of one another's beliefs and ideas, and
adoption of one another's purposes, can achieve

82

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

political cohesion in one way only: they may
be held compact by the strong hand of militar-
istic sovereignty. Such sovereignty, in its turn,
may be the authority of a conquering state or
it may be the authority created by the feder-
ation of states, not otherwise too friendly, for
defense against a common enemy. Such popu-
lations engage in teamwork because they have
to, not because they want to. They become ac-
customed to command. They learn to expect
direction, to have life planned out for them.
What Walter Bagehot calls "government by
discussion " they regard as both wasteful and
ineffective. A smoothly working administra-
tive machine they learn to admire as the best
of all machines invented by man, and the most
important instrumentality that functions for
human well-being.

How different is the political cohesion of pop-
ulations sufficiently alike or sympathetic enough
to amalgamate readily and to assimilate inevi-
tably! It is as suggestive of chemical union
as the political cohesion of antagonistic popula-
tions is suggestive of the mechanical union of
molecules under the impact of a steam hammer.
At some time far back in their history the blend-
ing social elements may have been dissimilar

83

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

and hostile, as were the Pictish, Goidelic, Bry-
thonic, Saxon, Danish, and Norman elements
which combined at length in the English peo-
ple. But if through long dwelling side by side
antagonisms have diminished and toleration
has prepared the mind for understanding and
the heart for friendliness, a true people comes
into being. Cooperation is created by the meet-
ing of minds, policies are determined and
shaped by discussion, sovereignty is the peo-
ple's will, government is ministerial only; per-
sonal liberty, individual initiative, private re-
sponsibility and public accountability are things
of course.

It will not do, however, to assume, without
some further looking into things, that the civili-
zation which is made possible by assimilation
and a harmonious blending of elements once
different, is on all accounts better than a civili-
zation of the more mechanical sort. Civiliza-
tion is a certain state, quality, and functioning
of human society, and all human society is a
great collective enterprise. In the struggle for
existence, which began when life began, group
effort has played a part as large and far more
conspicuous "than individual effort. The col-

84

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

lective struggle for existence has made possible
the moral and the intellectual advance of man-
kind by establishing relative security, creating
economic abundance, and putting a premium
upon the restraints, the sympathies, and the
mental activities that are essential to social co-
hesion and successful cooperation.

To see the social problem so, in its ultimate
nature, shorn of complications and stripped of
accessories, is to realize that any group, asso-
ciation, community, nation or international or-
ganization, achieves the supreme ends of ex-
istence more or less fully as it is more or less
efficient. And the efficiency must comprise both
the collective efficiency of the cooperating whole
and the personal efficiency of the individual
units whose efforts are combined. If individual
efficiency only or collective efficiency only were
enough, the problem of the quality of civiliza-
tion as poorer or better would be simplified.

This twofold aspect of efficiency must be
borne in mind when we attempt to appraise the
redoubtable efficiency of Germany, and to com-
pare it with the efficiency represented by the
allied nations.

German efficiency is "made"; French, Eng-
lish, American efficiency " grows. " In Ger-

85

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

many under orders from above a few selected
kinds of education are planned and organized.
No detail is neglected. From infancy the child
is dedicated to a specific future. By the time
he arrives at years of discretion he discovers
that parents and the state have left him small
scope for choice. He may, indeed, if of a more
than commonly rebellious spirit, break away
from the scheme of things into which already
he is fitted like a standardized piece in a mech-
anism. If he has been prepared for shop or
counting-house, in shop or counting-house he
probably will abide. His preparation will have
been excellent, and the chances are that he will
revere and obey the state that so thoughtfully
spared him the hard task of shaping his destiny.
If for the civil service, the army, or the uni-
versity he has been predestined, civil service,
military life, or the university career will prob-
ably claim him, and hold him to the end.

Or perhaps so much of education as is need-
ful for business or professional life has been
thought too precious to waste on him, born a
proletarian. The state does not therefore over-
look him. He is told how much of his wages
he must pay into a fund to provide against ac-
cident, illness, or other misfortune. If out of

86

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

work, a state employment agency, well organ-
ized and effective, will aid him quickly to find
new opportunity. If heredity has been unkind
to him, or notwithstanding the best efforts of a
watchful paternalistic state his childhood has
been spent among evil surroundings, he will be
taken in hand, and suitably corrected on a farm
colony, should he lapse into vagrant ways.

So in the life of each individual much is
foreseen, little is left to chance, and not too
much to personal choice.

In the relation of group to group, a like pre-
vision and administrative direction dispose and
regulate. Domestic and foreign markets are
catalogued and described; trade routes, ship-
ping facilities, credit facilities and demands are
inventoried. Any important information that
the manufacturer or exporter might need in
his business, if obtainable at all, can be found
in governmental guides or card catalogues as
readily as one finds the definition of a word in
a dictionary.

Natural resources and human life are con- }
served; men are drilled for war as prepared (
'for peace. Nothing is neglected, nothing left
to chance and, as in the relation of authority to
the individual, little is left to choice.

87

. PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

If in this pen-and-ink sketch of German effi-
ciency there be exaggeration, it is an exaggera-
tion that heightens the effect which the Ger-
man himself admires. It does not, as he sees it,
impair or detract.

But it is a picture that may be compared
with one that was painted in vivid colors by a
writer whose profound interpretation of social
evolution was given to the world a full gen-
eration ago. Who can read Herbert Spencer's
imperishable description and analysis of mili-
tarism and industrialism, viewed respectively
as contrasting social types, without perceiving
that any account of German social efficiency that
could be written within limits of truth would
coincide point by point with Spencer's account
of the militaristic, regimented state!

It is not to be denied that efficiency of the
German model has made and will continue to
make a powerful appeal to thoughtful minds in
other nations. Militarism devours and de-
stroys; but an unbridled individualism also is
notorious for appalling wastes and cruelties of
its own.

The achievements that we in America credit
fo personal- initiative, to untrammeled individ-
ual enterprise, put a strain upon imagination.

88

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

The industrial world of today, the accumula-
tions of capital, man's power over nature, the
substitution of heat energy and electric energy
for the toil of human muscles, swift transpor-
tation and the network of communication
throughout the earth — these are the creations
of discoverers, inventors, men of vision and dar-
ing, in England, France, America and other
countries where the human mind has worked
freely, swiftly, with amazing grasp and amaz-
ing precision, under liberty.

Yet these achievements have brought with
them a new exploitation of the wage-earner, a
concentration of wealth, an increasing control
of opportunity by a plutocratic minority, a
staggering waste of material resources, and a
growing menace of discontent. Is it to be won-
dered at that not only amateur reformers, but
disciplined publicists and seasoned statesmen,
too, have more and more turned to the statejor
control and coordination!

Plainly the superiority of one or the other
group of efficiency factors is not so far demon-
strated. Is it demonstrable f Can any one prove
to the satisfaction of all interested parties that
the German plan of life on the one hand, or

89

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the French, English and American plan on the
other hand, is on the whole and in the long run
beyond question more effective for the realiza-
tion of economic, moral and intellectual possi-
bilities? Or do we discover here a controver-
sial question that admits of no decisive answer
• — one over which men may endlessly dispute
without result, as the long battlelines of Europe
have been fighting in their trenches without
important advance on either side?

The obvious reply, in part at least, to this
question about the possibility of answering an-
other question, is found in the reflection that,
since each of the plans of life here contrasted
has great merits and great shortcomings, the
development of each so as to incorporate the
good features of the other may hold out a maxi-
mum hope to mankind. If, for example, Amer-
ica, England and France, maintaining their
standards of personal liberty, could yet make
use of the administrative organs of govern-
ment, subject to a democratic control, to corre-
late, coordinate, and regulate the spontaneous
activities of citizens, might we not attain the
best results which stand to the credit of au-
thority without sacrificing those that are at-
tainable only under liberty?

90

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Surely we may believe that such a develop-
ment is possible; at least, we may believe it
long enough to ask whether the German plan
or its opposite is more likely to develop into
one more comprehensive, offering a larger sum-
total of merits and a smaller inventory of de-
fects.

Put in this way, the problem in my judgment
is correctly stated, and can no longer be re-
garded as insoluble.

One day since the war began, a German uni-
versity docent, arguing with an American stu-
dent, maintained that Germany is more demo-
cratic than the United States. Asked to ex-
plain his meaning, he said : ' ' The German gov-
ernment does more things for its people than
yours does." To his mind, and, I suspect, to
the minds of tens of thousands of his compatri-
ots, democracy means nothing more than ' ' gov-
ernment of the people for the people." Of
democracy as defined by Lincoln, namely, "gov-
ernment of the people, for the people and by the
people," they appear to have little idea. Un-
less from the embers and desolation of war that
larger conception of democracy shall arise, and
transform the Teutonic state, there is seemingly
little likelihood that it will be the Prussian plan

91

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

of efficiency organization that will most rapidly
approximate the comprehensive scheme ; but in
the minds of nations that already have accepted
government by the people, for the people, all
the factors of idea and appreciation are present,
and even now are assembled, for the generous
expansion of democratic policy. Without for-
getting the priceless value of liberty and of in-
dividual achievement, the democratic peoples
have rapidly been coming to a truer appraisal
than they once made of the legitimate func-
tions of law and administration. Can we then
doubt that in these peoples centers the hope and
the expectation of an efficiency in every way
greater than any social efficiency the world has
hitherto known?

Not if one final consideration supports the
presumption so far established. The larger
tasks of civilization are the same in all gen-
erations, but the tasks that any one community
or group of communities has to perform in pre-
serving and developing civilization are not, un-
der all circumstances and generation after gen-
eration, unchanging. Group Hf e, like individual
life, proceeds through adaptation and adjust-
ment; and titanic forces, over which man lias
TmF little control as yet, are ever creating new

92

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

conditions to which civilizations, no less than
the humblest plant and animal organisms, must
adapt themselves under penalty of death.
Therefore the most crucial of all the questions
that can be asked about the relative excellence
of the two types of efficiency organization that
we are comparing, relates to their modifiability,
under slow-changing demand or acute crisis.

So long as the conditions under which an
organism lives undergo no change, the reactions
of the organism itself are over and over re-
peated, without change. Ages ago reactions of
this kind became correlated with the mechan-
ism of heredity in all the animal species, includ-
ing man. They are the original nature of man,
as of his humbler animal kindred. "We are
born with them, we do not have to learn them,
we call them instincts.

Supplementing his instincts every individual,
animal or human, has reactions that he has
learned but which, over and over repeated, un-
der conditions practically unchanging, have be-
come nearly as automatic, often as unconscious,
as instincts. We have toilsomely learned how
to walk and to talk, but usually we are not con-
scious of the muscular adjustments so painfully
acquired.

93

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

But now and then the unexpected happens.
Crisis makes havoc with a complex of condi-
tions that had undergone no change, perhaps,
for years or for ages. Then habits and in-
stincts fail. By accident or by a wild trial and
error, well nigh like a beating of the air, new
adjustments may be made, and the life of the
individual or of the race may continue. But
if such new adjustments are not somehow ar-
rived at, extermination is the fate of those
highly perfected instinct and habit mechanisms
that were working quite well enough so long as
nothing " happened. "

In the human race, trial and error have cre-
ated a wonderful apparatus, supplementing in-
stinct and habit, whereby, with a good deal of
skill and a large measure of success, we meet
the unexpected and adapt ourselves to it. This
mechanism we call intellect, or reason. Thanks
to it, the human race comes safely through cri-
sis after crisis, any one of which would have
been, or would be, the end of us all if we
had only our instincts and our habits to
rely on.

f Groups of individuals, like individuals singly,

) live instinctively, or by instincts supplemented

• by habit, to u great extent. The communities

94

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

of the so-called social insects, the ants and the
wasps for example, are only instinctive, or pos-
sibly only tropic, forms of cooperation. The
villages of beavers are communities maintained
and working by means of instinct and habit.
Human societies might be creations of instinct
and habit only, if they could live on indefinitely
under unchanging conditions. Educational
systems could by disciplinary methods train
every individual to perform certain duties as
automatically as a perfect bit of electrical
mechanism works. But such a community is
static. It would perish at the touch of crisis as
surely as the beaver village does when invaded
by the hunter with a gun.

Five thousand years of human experience
have demonstrated that in crises of the first
magnitude, of which wars are the supreme ex-
amples, centralized authority, working through
a highly coordinated organization, is vital. From
the days of Athens until now successful wars
have not been conducted through incontinent
resort to recall and referendum. But against
this indisputable fact stands a vast accumula-
tion of evidence that over and over againiiattlfis
and campaigns have been lost through a stupid
adherence to traolition, through overtraining,

95

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

through, lack of individual discretion, and fail-
ure of initiative. Even in militarism, then, it
seems, where central direction is essential, the
traits that are correlated with liberty are not
negligible.

If altering conditions do not take the form
of acute crisis, but are rather a fairly rapid
transformation of circumstance or environ-
ment, centralized authority may be of relatively
little value; while plasticity of mind, modifia-
bility of habit, the passion to explore and to
discover, inventiveness, and individual willing-
ness to take responsibility, are commonly the
factors of successful readjustment.. The most
enlightening example that history affords is the
United States. Here a people, inheriting
from the Old World a rich legacy of European
custom and tradition, has adapted itself, first
to the wilderness and the plain, then to state
and national political organization under ex-
perimental conditions, and now to a stupendous
industrial activity, to the most intense and ex-
tended urban life that has thus far appeared in
the world, and to the responsibility of world in-
fluence. There has been no break in continuity,
great crises have successfully been met, a re-
sponsible, instead of a despotic, centralized con-

96

THE CRISIS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

trol has been developed, yet liberty and in-
dividual initiative have been preserved.

So once more we arrive at the general conclu-
sion that the efficiency plan which offers a maxi-
mum of merits with a minimum of demerits,
which above all meets the requirements of our
modern world of incessant change, is the one
that is naturally evolved by democracy, having
the energetic, responsible, inventive individual
as its force-generating unit, but creating or-
ganization and strengthening central control as
the need arises.

Such are the elements, such the ideals, such
the efficiency, of the contrasting civilizations
now arrayed in mortal conflict. In one or the
other, every people of the world places its hope
and its faith. Each is meeting, as best it can,
the supreme test. We are witnessing the most
gigantic, the most fateful trial and error ex-
periment since human life began.

IV

THE EELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL
TO THE STATE

WESTEL W. WILLOUGHBY

To the political philosopher that which gives
extraordinary significance to the great struggle
now taking place in Europe is that, critically
viewed, it exhibits a contest between divergent
and, in the main, contradictory conceptions of
the nature of the state, of its ends, and of the
relation which exists between it and the individ-
uals subject to its authority. Whatever, there-
fore, may be the practical outcome of the pres-
ent war, its influence upon political theories
is certain to be great. The distinctive differ-
ences between the political views officially de-
clared in Germany and those popularly held
in England and her Dominions, in France and
the United States will have been made clear,
and the results to which they lead demonstrated
in deed. It will be noticed that I have spoken

98

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

in the one case of the opinions officially held,
and in the other of the doctrines popularly cur-
rent. This difference in characterization would
seem to be justified, for the German view, al-
though accepted by practically the entire peo-
ple, is one which in its source and in the means
by which it has been spread, justifies the title
which has been given it. These ideals which are
described as peculiarly German have in fact
been the product of Prussian thought and ex-
perience. Inasmuch, however, as they have be-
come controlling throughout the Empire, they
may fairly be spoken of as German rather than
Prussian. How far these theories may prop-
erly be spoken of as characteristic of Austro-
Hungarian thought it is not necessary to con-
sider. The Dual Kingdom has had domestic
problems and international ambitions which ex-
plain her actions independently of a political
philosophy such as is needed to give meaning
and logical coherence to the actions and utter-
ances of Germany; and it would seem that
Germany has utilized the ambitions of her ally
to obtain her cooperation in the realization of
her own WeltpolitiJc.1

1 Austria-Hungary is of course predominantly Roman
'Catholic, and Rohrbach asserts that there is a natural con-

99

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

Finally, it may be said that in this chapter I
shall not attempt by quotations from official and
professional writings to demonstrate the cor-
rectness of the analysis I shall make of the
political conceptions that are and for some
years have been dominant in Germany. I be-
lieve that I shall make an accurate statement of
them, but as to this fact the reader will have
to satisfy himself by an examination of the
source material, of which an abundance now ex-
ists in English translation.

It cannot be said that the ante-bellum polit-
ical philosophy of England and her allies had
been so clearly and definitely worked out as
had that of Germany. At any rate, it had not
become articulate in the English official and
professional mind, and employed as an argu-
ment and guide for national and imperial ac-
tion. But, though not often explicitly uttered,
this philosophy has existed in the thought of the
people and has directed constitutional practice
and international action and, since the outbreak
of the war, the English and those who have
sympathized with them have been led to search
their own political minds and to state more defi-

flict between Catholicism and the national idea of a State
such as Prussia stands for.

100

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

nitely and possibly more emphatically than they
have ever done before, their own political ideals.
Certain it is that the English have earnestly
sought to make evident to all, to themselves
as well as to neutrals, that the present war
is, at the bottom, a contest between contradic-
tory and rival conceptions of the state and of
public right, and that it is one in which all peo-
ples, aside from their immediate territorial or
commercial interests, are vitally interested.

The relation of the individual to the state
may be viewed in three main aspects. In the
first place, there is the question as to the ex-
tent to which the welfare of the one is con-
sidered as indissolubly bound up in the welfare
of the other. In the second place, there is the
question as to the extent to which and the man-
ner in which the individual may claim the right
or be granted the privilege of determining the
form of political government which shall exist,
of selecting those who shall operate it, and
of controlling what they shall do. In the third
place, there is the question as to the sphere of
governmental action; that is to say, of the ex-
tent to which public control and operation shall
be substituted for individual liberty of action.
These are distinct topics and need to^fce^sep-

101

i

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

arately considered; first we shall consider the
relation of public and private welfare.

During the distinctly monarchical period in
Europe and lasting until the end of the eigh-
teenth century, a theory was held and widely
practiced according to which the welfare of the
subjects was absolutely subordinated not so
much to the welfare of the state as to that of
their rulers; or, to put it in another way, the
welfare of the state was identified with the per-
sonal welfare of its rulers, and the interests of
the people subordinated to both. The state to-
gether with its people and their property were
regarded as the personal property of the ruler
to be disposed of as he might see fit. In his
"Four Georges" Thackeray tells us how the
Duke of Hanover sold to the seigniory of Ven-
ice sixty-seven hundred of his subjects, of whom
only fourteen hundred ever saw their homes
again, the proceeds of the sale being devoted to
the satisfaction of the royal duke's sensual
pleasures. "Bound all that Koyal splendor, "
writes Thackeray, "lies a nation enslaved and
ruined ; there are people robbed of their rights
• — communities laid waste — faith, justice, com-
merce trampled upon and well-nigh destroyed
— nay, in the very center of Royalty itself, what

102

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

horrible stains of meanness, crime and shame !
It is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest
gentlemen and some of the proudest women in
the world are bowing down ; it is the price of a
miserable province that the King ties in dia-
monds round his mistress' white neck. In the
first half of the last [eighteenth] century, I say,
this is going on all Europe over."

It might seem that a political practice such
as this might have been based upon postulates
that denied the possession by the people of
moral rights to consideration, or placed the
conduct of monarchs outside the realm of or-
dinary morality. It is quite clear, however,
that, despite the general acceptance of the doc-
trines of Machiavelli, the argument in behalf of
royal absolutism and selfishness was not stated
in terms as bald as these. It is true that the
rulers, when they took thought at all, regarded
themselves as endowed with overlordship by
divine providence, or, at least, by the work-
ing out of historical processes beyond direct
human control, and that, as thus circumstanced,
they regarded themselves as the absolute own-
ers of sovereignty as of a piece of property,
and that this ownership carried with it full
rights of use and disposition of their subjects

103

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

and of all that they might possess. This com-
prehensive right the rulers claimed as inhering
and original in themselves, and not as obtained
by any sort of gift or grant, real or construc-
tive, from those whom they ruled. At the same
time, however, it would be a mistake, I think,
to hold that the rulers in their dealings with
their subjects felt themselves free from all the
moral restraints which humanity and sympathy
impose. But it is clear that the moral obliga-
tions which they recognized were those of gen-
erosity and charity rather than those of jus-
tice which imply the possession of rights by
those to be benefited by them.

As rationalizing or at least as explaining the
acceptance of this theory which regarded the
right of rulership as a piece of property, and
as giving to the monarch what amounted to an
ownership of his subjects, including their goods,
it is to be remembered that it was not until the
early part of the nineteenth century that the
principle and practice disappeared from Europe
of regarding human beings as objects that might
be treated as chattels or appurtenances of the
soil. And indeed the entire feudal system out
of which the monarchical state developed was
based upon the idea that political jurisdiction

104

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

arises out of ownership — ownership of the land.
It would seem then that the rights claimed
and exercised by the eighteenth-century mon-
archs were not different in essential nature
from those claimed at the present time by hold-
ers of private property who regard the institu-
tion of private property as devoid of social or
political connotations, and, therefore, regard
themselves as vested with rights of use and dis-
position, the free exercise of which may not be
interfered with except under very special cir-
cumstances. Thus, as we know, there are at
the present time many owners of large fortunes
the possession of which has come to them by
accident of descent, by the favoring operation
of law, or by the happy working of economic
forces, who feel themselves free to use their
wealth, if they see fit, for their selfish welfare,
and, as employers of labor, consider that those
who work for them have no moral claim, and
certainly no legal claim, beyond such as is
founded upon their contracts of employment,
that anything beyond this which they may do
for the benefit of those subject to their eco-
nomic rule is an act of charity or generosity
rather than an obligation of distributive jus-
tice.

105

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

This proprietary conception of political
rulership has now happily disappeared from
the thought of modern civilized peoples. No
longer do the rulers of these nations regard
their lands and their subjects as objects of own-
ership which may be used for the advancement
of purely dynastic interests or the satisfaction
of purely selfish pleasures. Instead they feel
that their powers are to be exercised for the
benefit of the state over which they rule.
Whether or not the welfare of this political en-
tity termed the state is regarded as necessarily
including the welfare of its citizens, is a ques-
tion presently to be considered.

In a second respect, also, the eighteenth-cen-
tury conception of monarchy has been pro-
foundly modified. No longer is it held that the
exercise of political authority should be to any
considerable extent subject to the discretionary
will of those who possess it. Upon the con-
trary, in all its manifestations it is felt that
political power should be exercised only in ac-
cordance with forms and within the limits which
existing laws establish. This is the essential
meaning of constitutionalism, and under its
regime in the modern state the individual is
protected against oppression on the part of his

106

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

rulers as regards at least his ordinary rights of
person and property. Whether or not he is pro-
tected, and whether or not it is feasible under
any workable form of government so to narrow
the discretionary powers of those in authority
as to protect him against the adoption by his
rulers of broad public policies, especially in
matters of war and peace, which will be detri-
mental to his wishes and welfare, is a problem
of administrative politics which cannot be con-
sidered in the space assigned to this chapter.
It may be pointed out, however, that thus far,
not even in the most democratically and consti-
tutionally organized states, has it been found
feasible to subject the conduct of foreign affairs
to a popular control beyond that of censuring
a policy to which the state has already been
committed by those in authority. And even this
right of censureship in practice proves of very
slight value in cases where war has been pre-
cipitated or rendered imminent, and thus the
prestige or honor of the nation apparently in-
volved. %

It has been said that the essence of constitu-
tionalism consists in the fact that public author-
ity has its extent and modes of operation con-
trolled by law. When we ask ourselves whence

107

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

came these legal limitations upon the exercise
of sovereignty, who control their interpreta-
tion, and, in the last resort, determine their
continuation, we reach the first point at which
an important difference distinguishes the con-
stitutional jurisprudence of England, France
and the United States, from that of Germany
and Austria, and especially from that of the
Kingdom of Prussia.

The political philosophy of England since
1688 at least, of France since 1789, and of the
United States since its foundation, is squarely
committed to the proposition that all political
authority comes from the people, and is not
vested in the rulers as an original and inher-
ent right.1 This is not the assertion of that

1 The constitution of France, if its fundamental laws can
be regarded as constituting a complete instrument of gov-
ernment, does not contain an explicit statement of popular
sovereignty, but the principle certainly finds acceptance in
her constitutional jurisprudence. Perhaps the clearest
statement of the doctrine in formal terms is to be found
in the constitution of Belgium, adopted in 1831, in which the
following declarations occur : "Art. 25. All powers ema-
nate from the people. They shall be exercised in the man-
ner established by the Constitution. . . . Art. 29. The ex'
ecutive power is vested in the King, subject to the regula-
tions of the Constitution. . . . Art. 129. No law, ordinance,
or regulation" of the general, provincial, or communal gov-

108

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

merely moral doctrine that the people have a
revolutionary right to resist political oppres-
sion, and that thus, in a sense, all just govern-
ments may be said to derive their right to be
from the consent of the governed. This, indeed,
is asserted, but the doctrine is much more than
this. It includes the constitutional principle
that, as a legal proposition, the rulers possess
only delegated authority, and the legal limita-
tions which circumscribe their official acts are
not self-set, but are imposed by laws which
draw their force from the popular will as
authoritatively expressed at the polls, in con-
ventions, or in representative legislative
bodies.

As opposed to this fundamental constitutional
doctrine, the monarchical theory of continental
Europe is that the right of political rulership
comes from above. It inheres in, and is an
original right of, the monarch, and, as such, in
its exercise is ultimately subject only to the
will of him who possesses it. It is true that
Austria-Hungary, and the German Empire and

eminent shall be obligatory until after having been pub-
lished in the manner prescribed by law. Art. 130. The
Constitution shall not be suspended, either in whole or iru
part."

109

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

its individual states, including Prussia, oper-
ate under formal written constitutions, but
these instruments of government are regarded
as themselves the creations of the royal or im-
perial will.1 It thus results that not only may
the constitutions be changed by an exercise of
the royal or imperial will, but that the sover-
eign is regarded not as the exerciser of enu-
merated delegated powers, but as the possessor
of sovereign authority free from legal restraint
in all matters in regard to which he has not
seen fit to fix self-set limitations. This is the
constitutional theory, whatever may have been
the popular pressure which, historically speak-
ing, may have led to the promulgation of the
written constitutions.

It further follows from this constitutional
conception that the part played by the elected
representatives of the people in the enactment
of laws and in the adoption of public policies is

*It is not necessary in this discussion to consider the
question whether in the German Empire the sovereign
power is vested in the Bundesrath rather than in the Em-
peror. The fact that the king of Prussia is, ex officio, the
German emperor, and that as king he controls the Prussian
delegates which in turn control the Bundesrath, renders
largely academic, for the purpose of this paper at least,
the constitutional status of the emperor in the Empire.

no

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

one quite different from that which is played in
countries whose constitutional systems are
founded upon a democratic basis. According to
the doctrine held by German jurists the people
through their representatives participate not
in the creation of law, but in the determination
of the contents of a proposition which is to be
submitted to the sovereign for the exercise of
his supreme legislative will. Essentially speak-
ing, then, the situation is this: The ruler, as
a matter of grace and expediency, is pleased to
learn the wishes of his people regarding a prop-
osition of law or the adoption of a public pol-
icy, and to obtain such information regarding
its wisdom as a representative chamber is able
to provide ; and these wishes and this informa-
tion he necessarily takes into consideration in
determining the exercise of his own sovereign
will. But never does he regard these factors as
controlling in any affirmative sense. So long as
the constitution which he has promulgated ex-
ists, he agrees not to act contrary to its provi-
sions with regard to the matters which are
therein specified. But never for a moment does
the German ruler admit himself to be under a
legal or even a moral or political obligation to
give effect to an expression of the will of the

111

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

representatives of the people of which he dis-
approves.

It is this relationship in which the king stands
to his popularly elected legislative chambers
which interprets many features of German pub-
lic life which seem strange to English and
American observers. It explains in the first
place the fact that it is considered a wholly
justifiable practice for the king and his personal
advisers — "the Government " as they are called
— to control so far as they are able not only the
elections of members to the representative
body, but by rewards and other forms of po-
litical pressure to influence the votes of the rep-
resentatives after their election. It explains
furthermore the policy of the " Government "
in playing off one party or faction against an-
other and thus through the bloc system of ob-
taining a majority vote in favor of action which
the Government desires. It explains also the
fact that not even the first steps have been taken
in Germany towards the development of respon-
sible parliamentary government whether of the
English or the French type. It is indeed recog-
nized by all of their publicists that such a sys-
tem is absolutely incompatible with the Ger-
man conception of monarchical power. It is

112

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

true that irritation, at times intense in char-
acter, has been felt and expressed against the
assumption of the emperor of the right to di-
rect and control foreign affairs by his own per-
sonal acts and words. But this, however, has
not been because of any derogation of the power
of the representatives of the people or of a min-
istry which they support, but because, under
the imperial constitution, he is required to act
through his chancellor, who in turn is supposed
to exercise his power in and through the Bun-
desrath, which body in turn represents the
" Governments " of the several states of the
Empire. Since the downfall of Bismarck, and
especially since the retirement of his successor,
Caprivi, the emperor has selected as his chancel-
lor and president of the Prussian Ministerium
men who have been willing in very large meas-
ure to subordinate their own wills and judg-
ments to that of their imperial master, and
thus the personal influence of the emperor has
been very great, especially in foreign affairs.
While this has been at times disapproved of,
there has never been any movement, seriously
pressed, to subject his will to the control of the
popularly elected branch of the imperial parlia-
ment.

113

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

The monarchical conception in Germany ex-
plains still further the right which is freely ex-
ercised by the " Government " of dissolving the
elected chamber whenever other methods of ob-
taining its support for a government measure
have failed; and, it may be said that so pow-
erful is the official influence that may be exerted
in the ensuing election that in almost all cases
the result is that the newly chosen chamber is of
the desired political complexion. Von Biilow
in his "Imperial Germany" complains that the
Germans lack political ability by which, as he
explains, they show a disposition to form a
multitude of minor parties based not on broad
public principles but upon narrow, particularis-
tic, and personal interests. It would seem, how-
ever, that this failure of two or more strong
political parties to develop has been due in no
small measure to the attitude which the ' l Gov-
ernment" assumes toward all political parties.
The one strong political party — the Social
Democrats — which has been formed in German
imperial politics, is strong in numbers rather
than in influence, and, moreover, occupies a
very peculiar position, for, as von Biilow
frankly says, it has, from the standpoint of the
"Government," no right to exist. He flatly

114

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

stigmatizes its members as enemies of the Ger-
man State — enemies for the overthrow of whom
any means, including force when possible, may
rightfully be employed. As to the reasons why
the Social Democrats are held in such peculiar
detestation by the "Government" I shall not
have space to speak, but shortly stated it may
be said that it is not so much their legislative
program which is disapproved of as it is that
their fundamental political doctrines are in con-
flict with the monarchical conception of the Em-
pire and of Prussia. This is made abundantly
clear by reading between the lines of von Bil-
low's book.

Finally, it may be said that the monarchical
conception in Germany explains the open and
avowed measures which are taken by the rul-
ing authorities to control the formation and
expression of a popular opinion with regard
to matters of public policy. Not only is there
kept a strict control over unofficial expressions
in the press, as the numerous prosecutions for
lese majeste testify, but, and more espe-
cially, governmentally inspired articles are
constantly published in the leading news-
papers in order that the people shall be
led to take a favorable view regarding public

115

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

policies which are approved by the "Gov-
ernment."

It had not been my intention to encumber this
essay with quotations, but the point with which
I am now concerned is of an importance that
warrants me, in order to make it clear, in giv-
ing the words of Dr. Hasbach, the author of an
important work entitled "Die Moderne Demo-
cratie," published in 1912. In an article pub-
lished during the present year1 in which he
states more specifically the function which pub-
lic opinion plays in the modern constitutional
state, Dr. Hasbach says: "Who forms pub-
lic opinion? In democracy and parliamentary
monarchy [England] it is created' exclusively
by parties; in constitutional monarchy [e. g.,
Germany], on the other hand, by parties and the
Government. For a full understanding of this
important difference we first must clearly dis-
tinguish between parliamentary and constitu-
tional monarchy. In parliamentary monarchy
the influence of the monarch is as a matter of
fact so far suppressed that here, too, the
stronger party opinion determines the destiny
of the country, while in the constitutional mon-

1 The American Political Science Review, Feb., 1915.
"The Essence of Democracy."

116

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

archy the prince as joint possessor of the legis-
lative power, and as the possessor of the ex-
ecutive, exercises a considerable influence upon
the formation of public opinion. The ministers
nominated by him introduce bills into parlia-
ment; they defend them against the criticism
of representatives whom they are compelled to
face; the prince addresses messages to parlia-
ment ; he can dissolve it and thereby take a po-
sition on definite questions ; official newspapers
defend the attitude of the government; party
organs which approve the policy of the govern-
ment support it or open their columns to it ; the
government seeks to influence representatives,
etc."

" These are methods, " Dr. Hasbach contin-
ues, "some of which are also understood in
America; in America the President addresses
messages to Congress; presidents and govern-
ors attempt to influence the legislative power;
there are also newspapers which support the
President and governors against the legislative
assemblies if they consider the former's poli-
cies advantageous." This is true, but the im-
portant fact is that in America the president
and the governors of the States are themselves
the leaders of their parties and are representa-

117

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

tives of the people. The stronger public opin-
ion which thus finds expression in State action
is therefore a popular opinion and is not one
which is largely determined by the judgment of
persons who are not responsible to the people
and who only in a purely fictitious sense can be
said to represent them.

The refusal upon the part of the " Govern-
ment " in Germany to permit the popular will
as represented in the legislature to exert a con-
trolling influence in the determination of public
policies is of course not predicated solely or
even in major part upon the purely technical
and legal premise that sovereignty finds its fons
et origo in the monarch. Nor, as We have al-
ready seen, is it justified by any claim that po-
litical rulership need not necessarily be for the
benefit of the state or its people. Eather, it
would seem to be founded upon a conviction
that the problem of government is, by its very
nature, one, the satisfactory solution of which
cannot be secured by surrendering a controlling
influence to the people. And, in turn, the rea-
son why the government of the state is held
to be of this essentially unpopular or undemo-
cratic character would seem to be compounded
of two convictions.

118

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

The first of these beliefs is that, as a practical
administrative proposition, the problem of gov-
ernment is one which requires the exercise of
faculties of judgment and of executive over-
sight and control which it is not possible for an
electorate, however enlightened and well dis-
posed, to possess and exercise. The second be-
lief, which would seem to have at least a certain
amount of currency even if it cannot be said
to be generally held, is that the ultimate end
for the realization of which the state exists is
something else and higher than the welfare of
the citizens as individuals, whether distribu-
tively or collectively considered.

Upon the face of it, the proposition that the
efficient carrying on of the national govern-
ment of a state of any considerable size is an
administrative task, in the performance of
which it is not practicable to admit any con-
siderable amount of democratic participation
or control, is not an unreasonable one, and can
be met only upon a basis of fact. Certain it is
that, in its actual operation, German govern-
mental forms and administrative methods have
produced results which, from the standpoint of
present administrative efficiency, are superior
to those which any other government of the

119

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

world has been able to produce. Not only has
the social and industrial prosperity of the peo-
ple been wonderfully advanced, and the gen-
eral level of education raised to a high degree,
but a state has been created which is of tre-
mendous military strength. This much must
be admitted. The only way, therefore, in which
this exhibition of the efficiency of an undemo-
cratically organized government can be weak-
ened is by what lawyers call "confession and
avoidance, " namely, by admitting the claims
that are made and avoiding the conclusion at-
tempted to be drawn from them that this type
of political control is thus shown to be, if not
the best possible, at least superior "to the more
democratic forms which are exhibited in other
countries.

The avoidance of this conclusion is based
upon the assertion that the state power, the in-
dustrial development, the social welfare, and
the high level of education, especially upon its
scientific side, which Germany has secured, lack
certain elements of national greatness which
are more important than those which have been
obtained, and that, beneath its surface pros-
perity, German national life contains potenti-
alities of evil which need only time and oppor-

120

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

tunity to be manifested. Thus the critics of
deutsche Kultur have claimed that the successes
which have been the product of the German con-
stitutional and administrative system have been
of a materialistic character and have lacked
true ethical and spiritual elements — that right
has been sacrificed to might, political liberty to
state authority, and individual spontaneity and
freedom to organized efficiency; with a result, as
is claimed, that state action has thrown off the
limitations which ordinary morality imposes,
and the entire mind of the people has been cor-
rupted ; and that with their pride swollen with
a contemplation of the material success which
they have gained, they have lost respect for, and
appreciation of, the value of civilization and po-
litical ideals which differ from their own. Mis-
led by this distorted perspective, it is charged
that the Germans have adopted a Weltpolitik
which has brought them into necessary conflict
with other nations and made inevitable the ter-
rible conflict which is now devastating almost
all Europe.

A consideration of the issues which are thus
drawn between the Kultur of Germany and that
of other nations cannot, of course, be here un-
dertaken. An adequate treatment of them

121

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

would involve what would practically be a crit-
ical examination of the civilization of today.
The statement does, however, seem to be justi-
fied that the national ideals of which I have
spoken have, so far as they have been held,
tended to provoke armed conflict with the other
great powers. It is quite explainable and, in
very large measure, reasonable that any great
people should feel a conviction as to the superi-
ority of their own civilization over that of other
peoples; but this does not necessarily carry
with it a belief that it is desirable, or ethical,
or even possible, forcibly to impose one's own
cultural ideals upon other nations which are re-
luctant to receive them. If, however, we may
accept as representative the utterances of cer-
tain of their leading men, the Germans have felt
a conviction not only that their own Kultur is
inherently superior to that of any other race,
but that its super-excellence is so great that
its benefits must ultimately be recognized even
by those upon whom it has been imposed by
force operating in its materially most devastat-
ing form. Finally, one other characteristic of
this German conception of Kultur needs to be
mentioned, for it has a direct bearing upon the
relation of the individual to the state. This

122

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

characteristic is that Kultur finds its apotheo-
sis in the state — in the nation as politically or-
ganized. In other words, this Kultur is con-
ceived of as something more than a civilization
which is the summation of the culture of indi-
viduals. It is the nationally organized genius
of the people — a genius which finds its highest
end and ultimate manifestation in the power
and purposes of the state. And thus we are
brought to the second conviction which has been
earlier spoken of, namely, that the ultimate
end for the realization of which the state exists
is something else and higher than the welfare
of the citizens as individuals, whether distribu-
tively or collectively considered.

This theory to which we now turn is one the
statement of which in formal terms is not an
easy task, for like all mystical conceptions it
eludes exact definition. Furthermore, it would
seem to be rather an element which pervades
and influences German political philosophy than
an explicit premise upon which an argument is
based. It is, furthermore, an element which un-
doubtedly exercises an influence in the feelings
of patriotism of all peoples, but would seem
to be especially powerful in German national
thought.

123

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

The German nation is conceived of as an eth-
nic unity distinguished from other ethnic units
by a characteristic genius which finds its expres-
sion in die deutsche Kultur. This Kultur, how-
ever, as we have already pointed out, finds its
"best expression in and through the state. If
then, it is argued, this Kultur, the super-excel-
lence of which is assumed, is to find its fullest
realization, two things are necessary. First,
as far as possible, all persons who have in their
veins a sufficient amount of German blood to en-
title them to be regarded as inheritors of the
German genius should be brought within the
control of the state through which the spir-
itual inheritance which they potentially pos-
sess may find objective realization. Secondly,
the German nation thus politically united must,
through the strength of its state organization,
exercise throughout the world that influence
which is its just due. "Der Deutsche Gedanke
in der Welt" is the title which Eohrbach gives
to his well-known book in which he argues
for the widest possible extension of German
influence. Weltmach oder Niederganz is
the alternative which Bernhardi places be-
fore the eyes of his countrymen, by the first
of which -terms, as he has later explained,

124

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

he means not world dominion but world influ-
ence.

It will thus be seen that a mystical or geist-
liche significance is given to the conception of
both the nation and the state. The state is the
German nation viewed in a certain aspect — as
organized for the realization of the function,
which Providence has assigned to it in the
working out of the development of humanity
and of world civilization. It has an end of its
own which cannot be stated in the terms of the
welfare of the individuals who at any time hap-
pen to be under its control. Its immediate aim
is its own power, for without this power it can-
not realize its ultimate ends, and these ultimate
ends, it is evident, are so transcendent and su-
per-personal in character that the morality of
the means that may be employed for their at-
tainment cannot be subjected to the criteria
which govern the ordinary conduct of individu-
als. Furthermore, it is clear that when thus
stated the end of the state is one that requires
that all individual and community interests
should be subordinated to it.

It is not the purpose of this paper to consider
the validity of the assumptions made in the
theories which have been outlined. Its aim has

125

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

been simply one of orientation. If space
had allowed, however, the author would have
liked to exhibit the strong infusion of Hegelian-
ism which, in his opinion, it contains, and, fur-
ther, to show how the political transcendental-
ism of Hegel seemed to find objective demon-
stration in the history of Germany in the nine-
teenth century. If die Weltgeschichte 1st das
Weltgericht, it can be appreciated how the Ger-
mans were led to think that the Prussian Real-
politik had justified itself.

It cannot be denied that the German doctrine
which has been outlined is one which possesses
elements of lofty idealism. It rests, however,
upon assumptions which cannot be proved, and
leads to results which must be deplored. The
patriotism which it exacts is a false one. It de-
mands sacrifices for which no real return is
made; it is predicated upon premises which, if
adopted by all nations, each asserting their own
excellence, would render impossible the peace-
ful adjustment of conflicting interests and the
advancement of civilization through the peace-
ful cooperation of the nations of the world.

We turn now to the third phase of the rela-
tion of the individual to the state — a phase
which will undoubtedly be greatly influenced by

126

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

the present war, whatever its outcome. I speak
now of the extent of governmental control. The
exigencies of war have forced all the nations en-
gaged in it to extend in many directions, social
as well as industrial, the spheres of their gov-
ernmental regulation. Where, upon the whole,
good results are obtained from this increase in
state action, it may be expected that the regime
will, in many instances at least, be continued
after peace is established. But, more impor-
tant than this, Germany, whether she is deci-
sively defeated or not, will certainly have given
to the world an impressive exhibition of the re-
sults that are to be obtained from an adminis-
trative system efficiently organized and oper-
ated. There can be no question but that at the
present time, in England as well as the United
States, the laissez faire doctrine, as an a priori
principle, has lost its force, and that that which
especially operates as a deterrence to an exten-
sion of the activities of the state, whether by
way of regulation or direct operation, is the
fear that honest and efficient public administra-
tion cannot be secured. If then, as is very
likely to be the case, the nations of the world
should take to heart the lesson which Germany,
and especially Prussia, has so impressively

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

•

' . '

taught them, and be led to improve their admin-
istrative systems, we may be sure that this will
be followed by an increase in the control in-
trusted to those systems. How far this exten-
sion of the activities of government will be car-
ried only the future can reveal.

THE WAB AND INTEENATIONAL LAW

GEOKGE GKAFTON WILSON

International law is not dead. Those who
have made such affirmations have drawn their
conclusions too hastily. Far from being dead,
the subject is receiving a recognition which is
a striking tribute to its vitality. Apparently
not one of the warring nations regards inter-
national law as even in a weakened condition.

The attempts of the states at war to put them-
selves right in the eyes of the world and to cite
precedents in international law in support of
their acts is a comparatively new phenomenon
in the history of conflict among states. The
old idea that the state could do no wrong seems
now to be open to question, and it is even af-
firmed that kings can do wrong and that no
ruler can now affirm, "I am the state." The
right of a state to work its will regardless of

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

other states is not admitted, even though the
aggressor may be older, more powerful, or more
progressive. Some are questioning the old
maxim that "a higher civilization may right-
fully supplant a lower." Indeed, there does
not at present seem to be any satisfactory cri-
terion for measuring what is called civilization
unless it be, as some claim, the military power.
A careful analysis seems to cast more than a
doubt upon this basis of standardization. In
the exercise of sovereignty it must be recog-
nized that there are principles governing the
conduct of states and that these principles can-
not be lightly disregarded.

The flood of printed material that has poured
from the governmental and other presses in an
attempt to justify the action of the several
states now engaged in testing by arms some of
their ideas of civilization is enormous. There
is no escaping from these arguments. They
are inclosed in letters from old friends on either
side. They are furnished by unsubsidized and
subsidized representatives and patriots who
plead the causes of their respective states.
Why should this be if there exist no standards
or principles by which these actions should be
judged? The question is answered in these

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THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

documents themselves by the frank acknowledg-
ment that the aim of the publication is to show
wherein the state publishing the document has
observed the law of nations and wherein its op-
ponent has set it aside. White books, gray
books, orange books, yellow books, and others
in the chromatic range have appeared. Patri-
otic citizens of almost every walk of life and
grade of ability have added to the bulk of ma-
terial until the mass is appalling to one who
seeks the real facts.

The general testimony of each that its own
government "sought only peace/' causes one to
wonder by what mysterious power the aims of
those in authority were so manifestly perverted.
In general, international law favors the main-
tenance of peace and apparently each state
just now desires to have on its side the utmost
possible support for its method in the attempt
to maintain the peace of the world. Some of the
states which seem not to have found good
grounds for going to war before actually en-
gaging in hostilities have endeavored to dis-
cover them afterward. Whether these will
stand the test later, remains to be seen. The
important fact is, however, that there is a clear
attempt to bring the action within the range

131

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

of those which international law justifies and
supports.

It is worthy of notice also that the endeavor
to conform to international law as set forth by
international conferences and congresses has
been universal. The third convention of the
Hague Conference of 1907 provides that "the
contracting parties recognize that hostilities be-
tween them must not commence without a pre-
vious and unequivocal warning, which shall take
the form either of a reasoned declaration of
war or of an ultimatum with a conditional dec-
laration of war. ' ' In spite of the fact that the
general practice for two hundred years has
been in an overwhelming majority of cases con-
trary to this convention, even under greatest
strain, in 1914, the convention was followed.
The excuse could have been advanced that as
Servia had not ratified this convention, other
powers might be relieved of some of its obliga-
tions, but seemingly each wished to conform to
the latest pronouncement upon the law relative
to the commencement of hostilities.

How remarkable was this recognition of the
Convention of 1907 relative to the opening of
hostilities may be seen if the practice of states
during the last two centuries be reviewed. Dur-

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THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

ing this period there have been about one hun-
dred and forty wars. Of course, there are not
included the periodical revolutions of some of
the states of Central and South America. In
all the wars between 1700 and 1914 only ten
seem to have received formal sanction by dec-
laration, though a few were informally declared
and only six of the declarations might properly
be called preliminary. This was a wide depar-
ture from the practice of those ages which some
have been pleased to call "dark" when it was
held that an honorable foe would not strike
without previous notice. Even in the more
ancient days it was a custom to enter upon hos-
tilities with a foreign state only after a cere-
monial,' often of the most elaborate nature,
though the religious part seems sometimes to
have been to justify the war before the gods
rather than before men. The United States in
1898 by Act of Congress declared on April 25
that war had existed since April 21. In the
present great war where there is a network of
declarations of state against state, these have
been uniformly prior to the opening of hostili-
ties and frequently detailed, sometimes indicat-
ing not merely the day upon which war would
begin but also the hour and minute. Thus in

133

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the opening of the war there was in 1914 a re-
spect for conventional forms which shows in a
marked degree the influence of the work of the
Hague conferences and for legal purposes gives
a definiteness to the relations consequent upon
the state of war which has existed in few of the
wars of modern times.

As the third of the Hague conventions of
1907 has been observed as shown in the declara-
tions of war in 1914, so the fourth of these
conventions has been embodied in the laws of
nearly all the belligerents. In cases in which
this convention has not been thus embodied, the
corresponding convention of 1899 has usually
served a like purpose. These conventions re-
late to the laws and customs of war on land.
These rules were detailed and regarded as
showing the advanced ideas of the states of
the world as to the proper conduct of war if it
should unfortunately arise. Definite and for-
mal statement of the rules under which war
shall be conducted is in itself comparatively
modern, the first great set of such rules issuing
from the War Department of the United States
scarcely fifty years ago and commonly known
as Lieber's Code. Subsequent rules have been
frankly based upon Lieber's Code. These rules

134

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

of 1899 and 1907 are tributes to the fairmind-
edness of the early codifier. Is it not in itself a
marked advance that the old motto that ' ' all is
fair in war" is no longer even current? A
careful review of these Hague rules and testing
of action of the belligerents thereby show a
closer observance of these rules than is gen-
erally believed. Each belligerent party has
accused its opponent of violation or of failure
to observe these rules. These accusations have
been widely published and have received cre-
dence usually according to preconceived predi-
lections of the reader. It is reasonable to sup-
pose that there have been acts both in the east-
ern and in the western theaters of contest wilich
would not conform to the accepted laws of war.
Certainly the invading armies of both parties
have been accused of such acts and of course
it would be the invading army which would or-
dinarily be the only one generally guilty of, or
having much reason for, such acts. The rela-
tions between the respective combatant forces
seem to have been generally in accord with law.
The investigation of the treatment of prisoners
by a representative of the United States gov-
ernment showed a condition usually com-
mended. The advance in this respect since the

135

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

days of the American Civil War is marked.

The instruments of warfare have usually
been such as are approved by law. It is true
that the guns have been of a larger caliber and
of a longer range than those previously used.
In the huge siege guns Germany has found a
weapon of offense which made advance against
strongly fortified positions possible in the early
days of the war. The use of such guns made it
necessary for the opponents of Germany to use
other methods of defense than those originally
planned, but the legality of the use of big guns
on land and sea is unquestioned. There was a
proposition in the Conference at The Hague
that limitation of armaments begin by restrict-
ing the effectiveness of guns to the standard
of the most effective then constructed. There
was, however, such reluctance on the part of
the states supposed to have the most effective
guns, to furnish data upon the subject, that the
proposition failed. The effectivity of the gun is
not always a matter to be determined by its
caliber, but is often dependent upon the "man
behind the gun."

While the size and destructiveness of the gun
may not be, up to this time, subject to limi-
tation, there are restrictions upon the use of

136

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

certain projectiles which cause unnecessary suf-
fering. Small explosive bullets, copper bullets,
etc., are prohibited and such prohibition seems
to have been respected. Accusations in regard
to the use of dum-dum bullets have been made
by both belligerent parties. It is said that one
of the belligerents was about to submit as evi-
dence of his opponent's guilt certain dum-dum
bullets, when a neutral expert on projectiles
called attention to the fact that these bullets
about to be submitted were manufactured only
in the state bringing the accusation, and that
they would not fit any of the opponents' guns.
This accusation was allowed to drop. There
are in recent times many instances where it is
claimed that the uniform of an enemy is used to
deceive, but when the aim in modern warfare is
to avoid color which will be conspicuous, to
eliminate brass buttons and shining helmets,
and in many instances even to use no flag, it is
easy to understand that cases of mistaken iden-
tity in khaki uniforms may easily occur.

Aerial bombardment has also been a matter
on which considerable difference of opinion has
been expressed. The laws of land upon this
subject are brief and state "the attack or bom-
bardment, by any means whatever, of towns,

137

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

villages, habitations or buildings which are not
defended is forbidden. ' ' The rales also provide
that in making an attack the commander should
do all he can to warn the authorities. Mani-
festly if the attack is to be a surprise this in-
junction would not be obligatory and it was so
understood by those negotiating the conven-
tion. It is also exceedingly difficult for an air-
man to determine in every instance whether a
town is defended and there is thus far no clear
definition of defense. Only sixteen of the forty-
four states represented at the second Hague
conference have signed the convention prohibit-
ing the discharge of projectiles from aircraft
and Austria, France, Germany and "Russia are
not among these. Indeed aerial warfare is a
type so modern that its possibilities and proper
regulation can scarcely be predicated.

Here it should be borne in mind that new
means of warfare have from earliest times been
opposed by the party not possessing them.
Gunpowder was at one time the subject of de-
nunciation, cannons were condemned, and tor-
pedoes were regarded as the creation of devil-
ish ingenuity. There has been opposition to
the use of shells which diffuse gases and put
the enemy hors de combat. The late Admiral

138

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

Mahan pointed out that giving an enemy gas
which would not cause unnecessary suffering
and then capturing him might be more humane
than mangling him with projectiles before mak-
ing him a prisoner.

The laws of war of all countries regard non-
combatants who take up arms and commit hos-
tilities, except as levees en masse, as liable to
punishment for illegitimate acts. The nature
of the punishment will be determined by the
exigencies. It is true that the Hague rules pro-
vide against collective punishment for the acts
of an individual, but the report of the commis-
sion which drew up this article provides that it
shall be without "prejudice to the question of
reprisals, " Reprisals are usually acts of re-
taliation for illegitimate acts of warfare and
are therefore usually beyond the range of law.
These acts must be judged accordingly and
must not be advanced to show that the Hague
conventions have been violated. These conven-
tions have been observed far more strictly than
one could have anticipated in 1907 had the spec-
tacle of a general European war been prophe-
sied. The observance of the Hague conven-
tions has been in the main observance of con-
ventions which have been formally ratified.

139

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

More remarkable in some respects is the gen-
eral observance of the Declaration of London
of 1909 which had not been ratified by any of
the belligerents. It is true that Great Britain
has added very largely to the list of articles
contraband of war under the Declaration and
in this France and Eussia have followed. Great
Britain has also made extensions in the range
of destination which may be regarded as hos-
tile, thus making vessels more generally liable
to capture. Germany and Austria-Hungary
have, however, kept fairly close to the Declara-
tion in their published regulations and Japan
has almost completely embodied its principles.
There seems, however, at this time" (February
20, 1915) a tendency to undue extension of
the list of contraband to articles that are of
such indirect use in war that the list would
hardly have received the sanction of Grotius
three hundred years ago.

Recently negotiations have been in progress
in regard to the establishing of a war zone
about Great Britain and in regard to the use
of neutral flags by British merchant vessels.
Each belligerent seems to be endeavoring to
the utmost to extend the pressure upon his op-
ponent and- to save himself as far as possible

140

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

without too great risk of complications with
neutrals. In absence of complete information
as to whether the British government gave or-
ders to use the American or other neutral flags
and in absence of information as to the method
in which Germany is to apply her proclamation
in regard to the war zone, it may be said that
there is no law against the use of a neutral flag
by a belligerent merchant vessel though the
governmental order for such use, if such were
given, may be questionable. The United States
has generally disapproved of the use of false
colors in the time of war and the prohibition
would have much support in the mind of those
who believe in respect for a national flag.

It may also be said that the proclamation of
war areas or war zones is not unknown in in-
ternational relations. Such areas were pro-
claimed by Japan for defensive purposes dur-
ing the Eusso-Japanese War of 1904-5 and the
entrance to these areas was regulated or pro-
hibited.

The international law embodied in conven-
tions, declarations, and other agreements, con-
sidering the area of the present hostilities, has,
with comparatively few exceptions, been a mat-
ter of careful concern on the part of the bel-

141

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

ligerents. International law which is not thus
embodied has also received attention and bel-
ligerents have endeavored to justify many acts
by appeal to its principles, and in some in-
stances the belligerents have frankly admitted
violations of the law and their responsi-
bility for such acts. Of course, many in-
stances must await the issue of the conflict for
determination of incidence and amount of lia-
bility.

Not alone the belligerents, but neutrals also
have shown a disposition to observe their in-
ternational obligations. In some cases neutrals
seem to have leaned over backward in an en-
deavor to stand erect. In some states desirous
of maintaining neutrality the exportation of ar-
ticles, ordinarily regular objects of commerce,
has been prohibited. The articles embargoed
by neutral European countries for various rea-
sons number more than three hundred. This
list is varied, from acetic acid to zinc. It in-
cludes armor plates, arms, etc., by nature ab-
solute contraband, and dogs in Switzerland,
herring meal and reindeer in Norway, skees and
sticks in Sweden, etc.

Some neutral states endeavored in the early
days of the" war to prevent the making of loans

142

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

by private persons to belligerent governments,
but the impracticability of such measures was
well understood at The Hague in 1907, and such
obligations were not imposed on neutral gov-
ernments even in form. The obligation of
a neutral government itself to refrain from
making loans to belligerents was clearly and
positively acknowledged. It was plain that
while a neutral government might control and
be responsible for its own acts, it could not con-
trol or be responsible for all the acts of its sub-
jects. A banker, particularly if he had branches
in other countries, could transfer money in such
fashion that its ultimate destination could not
be known to the authorities of the state from
which the transfer was made.

The United States ' proclamation of neutrality
is extremely comprehensive, though it does not
as some have asserted forbid the expression of
any except neutral opinions within the jurisdic-
tion of the United States. On the other hand,
it distinctly announces that it does not propose
to interfere "with the free expression of opin-
ion and sympathy, ' ' provided this does not take
certain material forms, as for example, the aug-
menting of the force of a belligerent vessel of
war. The regulations for securing the mainte-

143

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

nance of the neutrality of the Panama Canal
are even more detailed.

There are, moreover, many new factors in
this war which did not exist or were not fully
developed in earlier wars, such as mines, sub-
marine boats, radiotelegraph, aircraft, etc.
There was not a satisfactory agreement upon
the use of submarine mines at the Hague Con-
ference in 1907. The use of such mines in the
Eusso-Japanese War in 1904-5 had called the
attention of the world to the dangers of the un-
restricted laying of mines. In the conflicting
claims of belligerents in the present war one
fact stands out clearly, each belligerent desires
that his action be regarded as within the law,
or else justified as a reprisal to meet a viola-
tion of law by his opponent.

As to the use of submarine boats, there has
been and is no well-defined law. This means of
warfare is comparatively new and rules have
naturally not yet developed for its regulation.
That Great Britain had anticipated that it
might be used against merchant vessels is in-
dicated in the already developed policy of arm-
ing such vessels, "for defense," as she an-
nounced. It is often difficult to determine the
difference in" fact between offense and defense.

144

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

The simple fact that one strikes first is not
sufficient evidence. The claim that the subma-
rine boat is a secret means of war is not a valid
argument against its use. This argument has
been advanced against other means of war but
never long and seriously entertained. It is true
that the submarine may prey in a dangerous
manner upon the private property of a bellig-
erent, yet at the Hague Conference of 1907
France, Great Britain, Japan and Russia were
among the eleven states voting against the im-
munity from capture of private property at
sea and Austria and Germany supported the
American proposition for exemption. The vote
stood twenty-one votes for, eleven against and
one state not voting.

The use of the radiotelegraph has been put
under very strict control in the United States,
thus formulating as it were a set of rules which
may later become generally accepted. Cer-
tainly the rules have been admitted by the bel-
ligerents and to this extent have become inter-
national.

The rules in regard to the use of aircraft
were not formulated at the beginning of the
war, but in practice there has been care to avoid
passing through the air above neutral territory.

145

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

Neutrals have also seemed inclined to main-
tain their rights to jurisdiction in the air above
their territory. Aircraft have been placed in
the category of contraband and no objection
has been raised.

The wide discussion upon the sinking of
enemy merchant vessels at sea has shown a gen-
eral tendency to look for support for the action
in international precedents. These have not
been difficult to find. The contention that neu-
tral vessels may be sunk if they cannot con-
veniently be brought to a prize court is one
which it is more difficult to sustain, though there
is support for this in the decisions of some
courts and in some prize regulations. These
are questions upon which the International Na-
val Conference in 1908-9 found much difference
of opinion. The law upon the subject cannot be'
said to be settled.

There have unquestionably been acts upon
the part of belligerents, if one can trust the re-
ports that each makes in regard to the oppo-
nent, which were not merely not sanctioned by
international law, or not within the provisions
of international law, but were contrary to in-
ternational law. The newspapers of one side
accuse the invading party of the other of atroci-

146

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

ties. It is natural that this should be the case
as the invading party would be obliged to act
in a more rigorous manner than the party on
the defensive within his own territory. This
might lead to, or be accompanied by, acts in
excess of, or contrary to, the acts permissible
under the rules of international law.

Here again, however, the fact that the injured
belligerent hastens to bring these actions to
public notice as being in violation of interna-
tional usage and meriting general condemnation
is an evidence of the force which the law has
acquired.

It has not been the purpose of these remarks
to justify the action of any one of the belliger-
ents nor to hold any belligerent up for condem-
nation. There seem to have been some acts
upon the part of each of the belligerent parties
which are open to question and which must be
reserved for a later judgment. Such conduct
has been common in all wars. This war, in-
volving so many states and fought over an area
so great, affords more opportunity for acts not
in accord with international law. The change
in the means of warfare, the introduction of
new instruments, the use of the air above the
earth, and the sea, and the water under the sea-

147

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

level, have given rise to new problems, and law
has not kept pace with these changes. States
have been reluctant to make agreements in re-
gard to their probable conduct under conditions
which have yet to be tested. Such facts as these
should be kept in mind when passing judgment
on the acts of the belligerents during the last
six months. It should also be kept in mind that
in some instances the violation of international
law has been frankly admitted and indemnity or
reparation has been unhesitatingly promised.
In such a case the promise of indemnity does
not make the act less a violation of law, but
makes the existence of its obligatory force un-
questioned even when the so-called "higher
state policy" has been followed.

When thinking at the present time of that
treaty which was ratified and proclaimed almost
exactly one hundred years ago (February
18, 1815) and of the hundred years of peace
with Great Britain since that time, it is well to
recall that even though the present is a time
of a war of unparalleled magnitude, it is at
the same time a period when the influence of
the principles of law are more potent than a
hundred years ago and indeed more potent than
ever in modern times. The old maxim, inter ar-

148

THE WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

ma silent leges, no longer applies, and the doc-
trines which belonged with the maxim are pass-
ing away. It would be absurd to say that in the
great struggle of the nations now going on
there has not been disregard of international
law, it would be equally absurd to attempt to
give a complete justification for all the acts of
one side as against the other, and it was not the
purpose of these remarks to endeavor to ac-
complish either of these ends. It is the purpose
to show that the work of the Hague conferences
and the International Naval Conference was
not in vain, that the principles of international
law have not lost all their power, that while
new conditions may have made old rules inap-
plicable, there has been an inclination to ob-
serve the fundamental principles, that while vio-
lations of law may have taken place, often the
liability for such violations has been recognized,
and thai international law, far from being im-
potent, embodies the principles under which the
most powerful nations of the world now seek
to find sanction to justify their actions before
the opinion of the world.

VI

THE WAE AND INTERNATIONAL COM-
MERCE AND FINANCE

EMOBY E. JOHNSON, Ph.D., Sc.D.

The economic interests of all countries are
so interrelated that a prolonged war between
any two important industrial nations inevitably
creates a serious disturbance of international
finance and trade. The present war, which in-
volves the larger part of Europe and also more
or less directly much of Asia, Africa and Aus-
tralia, has temporarily stopped a large share
of the world's international exchanges, has com-
pelled such trade as is carried on to be con-
ducted under unprecedented conditions, and
has so interfered with commerce generally as
seriously to modify, at least temporarily, the
commercial and industrial activity of all coun-
tries, neutral as well as belligerent. It is cer-
tain that the permanent industrial and commer-

150

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

cial effects of the present war will much ex-
ceed those that have resulted from any previous
international struggle, with the possible excep-
tion of the Napoleonic wars.

This result is to be expected, first of all, be-
cause of the unprecedented destruction of cap-
ital. If the war ends in 1915, it is estimated
that the military expenditures will reach twenty
billion dollars, and if, as now seems possible,
the war should continue through 1916, the ex-
penditures may reach forty or fifty billion dol-
lars. The Government expenditures, however,
represent only a part of the expenses of the
war. Capital is destroyed in great quantities
over large areas, production is checked, trade
is reduced to a fraction of its normal propor-
tions, and the total economic waste due to the
war may be double or treble the measurable
military expenditures. This wholesale destruc-
tion of capital must necessarily influence for
many years to come the monetary and financial
institutions of the leading countries of the
world, must compel changes in international
finance, must lessen the industrial output of
many countries, modify the conditions of in-
ternational competition, and, by means of in-
creased prices and lessened opportunity, make

151

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

living conditions harder for the people of
Europe and for those in many other parts of
the world.

To what extent and in what manner the pres-
ent misfortunes of Europe will affect the in-
ternational trade and domestic commerce of the
United States ; to what degree the United States
will supplant Europe as the financial and inter-
national banking center; and in what particu-
lars the economic position of the United States
among the industrial and commercial countries
of the world will be benefited, are problems to
which economists and business men are giving
earnest thought, with the hope of being able
to read aright the horoscope of the world's eco-
nomic future.

Of course no one can at the present time defi-
nitely predict how the great European War will
affect the financial, commercial and industrial
interests of the United States. There are too
many unknown factors in the problem. It is
not known how long the war will last, nor how
many nations will become involved in the titanic
struggle. This paper is being written just at
the time Italy is joining the war. It is probable
that some of the Balkan States, and possibly
other countries of Europe, may yet become in-

152

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

volved in the struggle. Indeed, it is within the
realm of possibility that the United States it-
self may be unable to protect American national
and individual rights while maintaining her po-
sition of neutrality. Assuming that the United
States succeeds in remaining neutral — as every
patriotic citizen most earnestly hopes will be
possible — also assuming that the war will not
include more nations than have already been
drawn into the conflict, and assuming further
that the struggle will continue for another
twelve months and thus last for a period of
about two years, what will probably be the ef-
fect of the war upon the economic future of
the United States? In answering this general
question it will be well to consider first how
the war will affect the American money market
and the position of the United States as a finan-
cial and banking center.

The first and most obvious effect of the whole-
sale destruction of capital by the European
War will be a higher rate of interest. Interest
rates were stiff before the beginning of the
present war, the relatively high rates of inter-
est that have prevailed during recent years be-
ing thought by experts to have been the result
of the destruction of property by the series of

153

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

wars that occurred from 1898 to 1905. The
Spanish- American War is said to have cost a
billion of dollars, the Russo-Japanese War an-
other billion, and the Boer War two billion dol-
lars. The direct expense of these three wars
amounted to at least four billion dollars. The
effect of the destruction of that amount of capi-
tal upon the rate of interest commanded by in-
vestment capital had not been overcome when
the present war started.

It is certain that the demand for capital for
at least two decades following the close of the
present war will be abnormal. Had there been
no war, there would have been a relatively large
demand for capital in 1915-16. In Several coun-
tries, particularly in the United States, times
have been dull and a period of business expan-
sion seems about to begin. To secure capital
that must be obtained even at high interest
rates, Europe at the close of the war will bor-
row from all countries that have surplus capital.
American capitalists will unquestionably ad-
vance large sums to European borrowers, and
American investors will be able to secure high
rates of interest not only because of the neces-
sities of European borrowers, but also on ac-
count of the opportunities for the investment

154

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

of American capital in domestic industrial en-
terprises.

If the great nations now at war succeed in
making peace with each other before the credit
of any one of the nations collapses and thus
endangers or overthrows the credit institutions
of other countries, we may expect peace to be
followed by an entirely abnormal inflation of
credit. Indeed, all of the powers at war have
made a greater use of credit than would have
been deemed possible. About twelve billion dol-
lars of war loans have already been floated or
authorized. Great Britain has issued between
two hundred and three hundred million dollars
of paper currency redeemable in gold by the
Bank of England; and the bank has agreed to
make loans to the Government taking as se-
curity the Government's bonds issued in the
war loans. The Bank of France has in-
creased its note issue more than fifty per
cent., and cities and towns in different parts of
France have issued large quantities of paper
money. Likewise, in Germany, loan banks in
different parts of the empire, with the approval
and aid of the Government and the Eeichsbank,
have put large quantities of paper money in cir-
culation and the banks have accepted practi-

155

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

cally all kinds of property as a basis for credit
and financial assistance. The termination of
the war will not bring an end to the use of gov-
ernment credit, provided the financial position
of the several governments at the close of the
war is such that further use may be made
of government credit. Capital will be so greatly
needed that the revival of business will de-
pend very largely upon government assistance,
and, if aid can be given, it is certain that every
form of government credit that can be safely de-
vised will be employed in aiding the revival of
industry and trade.

The demand for gold will continue for some
time after the close of the war, and there is
much danger that the supply of gold in the
United States will be reduced to an unsafe
amount. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve Act
has established a banking system that will prob-
ably enable the United States adequately to pro-
tect its supply of gold. It is most fortunate
for the country that the banking laws of the
United States were revised in 1914. The finan-
cial situation of the country would have been
even better today had the banking laws been
revised a year earlier.

It is the expectation of many persons that
156

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

the financial and industrial strength of Europe
will be so reduced by the present great war that
New York City will be able to supersede London
as the primary money center of the world. Un-
doubtedly, the United States will, as a result
of the war, occupy a much more important posi-
tion in international banking than it now holds ;
and it is possible that at least a part of the bills
of exchange drawn in the transactions of inter-
national trade will, in the future, be in terms of
the dollar instead of the sovereign, and will be
drawn against New York instead of London.
At the present moment, a Pan-American Finan-
cial Conference is in session in Washington,
called together by the United States Secre-
tary of the Treasury to consider how the
United States may best cooperate with the
other countries of the American continent
to provide the funds and banking facilities
required for the present and future conduct
of the trade of Central and South American
countries.

It will be well, however, not to expect that
New York will suddenly become the world's-
leading financial center. As was stated by Mr.
T. W. Lamont, of the firm of J. P. Morgan and
Company, in a paper read April 30, 1915, before

157

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the American Academy of Political and Social
Science :

"Many people seem to believe that New York
is to supersede London as the money center of
the world. In order to become the money cen-
ter we must of course become the trade center
of the world. That is certainly a possibility.
Is it a probability? Only time can show. But
my guess would be that, although subsequent
to the war this country is bound to be more im-
portant financially than ever before, it will be
many years before America, even with her won-
derful resources, energy and success, will be-
come the financial center of the world. Such a
shifting cannot be brought about quickly, for of
course to become the money center of the world
we must, as I have said, become the trade cen-
ter ; and up to date our exports to regions other
than Great Britain and Europe have been com-
paratively limited in amount. We must culti-
vate and build up new markets for our manu-
facturers and merchants, and all that is a mat-
ter of time. ' '

Mr. Lament is unquestionably correct when
he suggests that no country can become a finan-
cial center of the world unless it enters largely
and widely into international trade. The fu-

158

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

ture of the United States in international
finance will depend upon the success attained
by this country during the present war, and sub-
sequent thereto, in building up its foreign com-
merce. What are the prospects in this regard?

The immediate effects of the war upon Amer-
ican commerce have been to stop all direct
trade with Germany, to limit greatly the trade
to neutral countries, and to render difficult and
dangerous all intercourse with the Allies. The
foreign trade of the United States in numerous
commodities has been greatly limited in quan-
tity and trade as a whole is being carried on
very expensively on account of the high freight
and insurance rates. Certain articles such as
foods and military supplies are being exported
in greatly increased volume. The effect of the
war upon imports has been greater than upon
exports.

At the close of every important war that has
interrupted trade and interfered with the in-
dustrial activities of two or more producing
countries, there is a sudden expansion of com-
merce, due to the effort of producers to dis-
pose of accumulated stocks, and to the desire of
buyers to secure materials with which to renew
production, and also because of the extraordi-

159

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

nary effort which everybody makes to recoup
the losses suffered during and in consequence
of the war.

It is certain that European purchases from
the United States will be large for the first year
or two following the declaration of peace. Nec-
essarily, those purchases will be made, for
the most part, upon credit; and European
buyers will make use of their credit to the full-
est extent in order to secure the materials and
supplies required to renew industry upon as
large a scale as capital and labor conditions will
permit. After having made these large pur-
chases immediately following the war, all pro-
ducers in Europe will necessarily be obliged to
l)uy with unusual caution and to limit purchases
to the smallest possible proportions. Instead
of buying freely, the European producers will
endeavor to sell the products which they have
manufactured during the first year or two in
order to pay off their debts and to secure cap-
ital for further industrial activities.

Thus immediately following the war the ex-
ports from the United States to Europe will be
large, and this period of heavy exports will be
followed by large imports into this country ac-
companied by a restricted export trade. Ameri-

160

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

can industries, having been stimulated to un-
usual activity immediately following the war,
will probably experience a severe check two or
three years after the war; and, if a panic is
avoided, it will be due to the foresight and busi-
ness restraint of American manufacturers, par-
ticularly the large business organizations that
control a relatively large share of the output
of staple industries. Every great war of the
last century has been followed by a period of
feverish business activity which has, within a
few years, been succeeded by a business depres-
sion of greater or less severity. It remains to
be seen whether the lessons of history have been
well enough learned by the captains of Ameri-
can industry to enable them to prevent the repe-
tition of what has happened after previous
wars.

South America, Africa and Oriental countries
are, at the present time, unable to secure from
Europe many of the articles which they have
regularly purchased from European exporters.
Likewise, the European market for many South
American, African and Oriental goods is
greatly restricted. The conditions seem ex-
traordinarily favorable for the rapid expansion
of 'the foreign trade in the United States. If

161

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

the war continues through 1916, American pro-
ducers ought to secure a portion of the markets
that have previously been supplied from
Europe. It was expected when the war broke
out that there would immediately be a large in-
crease in the trade of the United States with
South America. The expectation, however, was
not realized, because the purchasing power of
South American countries was greatly reduced.
The banking and commercial connections of
South American countries having been mainly
with Europe, the European War almost par-
alyzed South American trade and industry.
Banking and credit institutions in South Ameri-
can countries were unable to be of assistance to
producers and traders, and even now, nearly a
year after the opening of the war, financial con-
ditions in South America are still unsettled.
The United States is now beginning to secure
part of the South American trade that was for-
merly carried on with Europe. Great Britain,
however, is holding most of her South Ameri-
can commerce, and, without doubt, Germany
will be able to resume her South American trade
without very great difficulty at the close of the
war.

It will be an advantage to the United States
162

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

to be in possession of a part of the commercial
field formerly occupied by European producers
and traders, but it would be a mistake to expect
the United States to be able to hold all the new
trade that will have been diverted to her from
European producers while the war was in prog-
ress. While European manufacturers may not
be able to regain all the ground they have lost,
they will, within a comparatively few years, re-
cover most of the trade that has been taken
from them. There are several reasons why this
is to be expected.

The commerce of the United States with
South America or with other parts of the world
depends, first of all, upon the amount of capital
invested in foreign countries. Up to the pres-
ent time, the industries of South America, Af-
rica and the Orient have been developed mainly
by British and German capital. The people of
Belgium, Holland, and some other European
countries have also invested largely in various
parts of the world. Trade follows capital into
foreign lands. As far as can be learned, British
and German capitalists are retaining their
South American investments, with the confident
expectation of engaging actively in the indus-
tries and trade of South American countries

163

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

as soon as the war is ended. If American trad-
ers compete in the future successfully and
largely with European producers and traders
in South American countries, it will be in con-
sequence of a greater investment of American
capital than has thus far been made in South
America. What is the prospect that such in-
vestments will be made?

There are definite indications that American
investors are looking with increased favor upon
investments abroad. It is stated that seven
hundred millions of American capital have been
put into Canadian industries other than agri-
culture, that a half a billion dollars have been
invested in Mexico, Central America, Cuba,
Haiti, Chile and Peru. The amounts that have
been invested in other Latin American coun-
tries cannot be stated, but they are a consid-
erable sum. Since the war began, Argentina
has taken an unusual amount of American cap-
ital in the form of merchandise, for which pay-
ment has been made, in part, by treasury notes
of the Argentine Government sold in this
country.

It is easier for any country to secure trade
abroad when its citizens reside in the foreign
country with which the trade is carried on.

164

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

Great Britain and Germany, notably, have built
up their trade in South America, Africa, and
the Orient very largely because British and Ger-
man subjects reside in large numbers in for-
eign countries. It has not yet become the prac-
tice of American citizens to reside abroad in
any considerable numbers. Industrial oppor-
tunities at home have, until recently, been more
alluring than the possibilities of securing wealth
abroad. In all probability, the time has come
when increasing numbers of persons born and
educated in the United States, will, for busi-
ness and other reasons, make their residence
in South America, Africa, and the Orient, and
this will unquestionably prove to be of assist-
ance to the United States in holding and devel-
oping the foreign trade obtained during the
period of the war.

A former handicap upon the development of
the foreign trade of the United States has been
remedied by Sections 13, 14 and 25 of the Fed-
eral Eeserve Act. Now, for the first time, it
is possible for an American bank chartered un-
der the National Banking Act, to establish and
maintain branches in foreign countries. Sec-
tion 25 of the Federal Eeserve Act provides
that "any national banking association possess-

165

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

ing a capital and surplus of $1,000,000 or more"
may, with the approval of the Federal Eeserve
Board, establish "branches in foreign countries
or dependencies of the United States for the
furtherance of the foreign commerce of the
United States." This provision of the act has
already been made use of. The National City
Bank of New York has established branches at
Buenos Aires in the Argentine Eepublic, and in
Eio de Janeiro and Santos in Brazil. Permis-
sion has been given that institution to establish
a West Indian branch with a main office at Ha-
vana and with several sub-branches at various
points in Cuba, Jamaica and Santo Domingo.
The authority to open a branch bank at Eio
de Janeiro also included the right to operate
sub-branches at several points in Brazil. In all
probability, other American banks interested in
foreign trade will establish branches in dif-
ferent parts of the world.

Section 13 of the Federal Eeserve Act pro-
vides that ' ' any member bank may accept drafts
or bills of exchange drawn upon it and growing
out of transactions involving the importation
or exportation of goods having not more than
six months sight to run." Banks may accept
foreign bills of exchange to an amount equal to

166

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

one-half of their paid-up capital stock and sur-
plus. This makes it possible for American
banks to rediscount acceptances based upon im-
ported and exported goods, and opens a new
field in which to conduct business, while enabling
banks in this country to be of great assistance
in the future development of American for-
eign trade. The banking prerequisites of the
development of a larger trade between the
United States and South America seem now
to have been met. As the trade increases it will
be possible to afford merchants and manufac-
turers the necessary international banking fa-
cilities.

The fact that the relatively small volume of
commerce that has been carried on between the
United States and most South American coun-
tries up to the present time has been trans-
ported, for the most part, in foreign ships, and
that there has been no marked tendency to es-
tablish American steamship lines for opera-
tion between the ports of the United States and
countries of South America, has caused many
students of commerce to argue that the future
development of the trade of the United States
with American countries to the south, will de-
pend upon provision being made, either by the

167

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

Government or by private capital, for a large
increase in transportation facilities. Undoubt-
edly, regular and adequate steamship services
from American ports to South American coun-
tries would make the development of commerce
easier, and tend to diversify as well as to extend
the trade between North and South American
countries. It should be remembered, however,
that steamship lines and other transportation
agencies are merely trade facilities which cap-
ital will provide whenever it becomes evident
that profit can be secured by establishing and
maintaining such facilities.

Trade development depends primarily upon
the existence or non-existence of favorable in-
dustrial, financial and mercantile conditions.
Without doubt, production is carried on within
the United States so economically that Ameri-
can producers of many kinds of articles can
compete successfully with manufacturers in
other countries ; and, as has been pointed out in
this paper, it seems probable that the interna-
tional banking facilities needed in carrying on
a larger trade between North and South Amer-
ica are about to be provided. There remains,
however, .for American manufacturers and
traders to develop the merchandising meth-

168

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

ods by means of which European mer-
chants have secured the major share of the
foreign trade of South American coun-
tries. For some reason, American producers
and merchants are not as successful traders as
are the merchants of Great Britain and Ger-
many. The normal attitude of the American
manufacturer is that the superiority of his
goods will guarantee their popularity with for-
eign buyers ; he feels it is necessary only to call
the foreigner's attention to the character of
American goods and to the opportunity the for-
eigner has to secure goods in the United States.
The British, and particularly the German, mer-
chants, on the contrary, have actively solicited
the trade of the South American buyers, and
have sought to adapt European goods and
European merchandising methods to the needs
and customs of South American producers.
These generalizations apply broadly, and, as in
the case of all general rules, there are excep-
tions. There are, indeed, evidences of the de-
velopment of better merchandising methods on
the part of American producers and exporters.
The least difficult facility to secure in the de-
velopment of foreign trade is transportation.
The world over, ships are seeking cargo and,

169

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

except when temporarily prevented by a war
between commercial nations, shipping facilities
can be secured in proportion to the needs of
trade. If American financiers and manufactur-
ers succeed in developing a larger South Ameri-
can trade, that trade will promptly call into be-
ing adequate shipping facilities. It will not be
necessary for the United States, even tempo-
rarily, to engage in the steamship business, al-
though the Government should do whatever it
can to remove the obstacles to the investment of
private capital in the business of ocean trans-
portation. The function of the Government is
to create such trade conditions (as will enable
bankers, manufacturers and merchants profit-
ably to engage in international trade. When
trade can be carried on profitably on a large
scale, shipowners will be quick to supply the
requisite transportation facilities.

In this connection, it is important to consider
what the effect of the present war will be upon
the supply of shipping and upon ocean freight
rates. A large tonnage of merchant shipping
has already been destroyed, and submarines are
almost daily sinking one or more vessels. Ef-
forts are being made by the United States to
bring about some limitation upon the destruc-

170

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

tive methods of submarine warfare, but it re-
mains to be seen whether a check will be put
upon the unprecedented destruction of ocean
shipping. What will be the total loss of mer-
chant shipping during the war cannot be fore-
told; but, although the loss will be large, the
percentage of the world's total shipping that is
destroyed may not be greater than the percent-
age representing the decrease in the volume of
international trade that will result from the de-
struction of capital during the war and from
the reduced industrial output during the years
of reconstruction of industry following the war.
As soon as the war closes there will be restored
to the merchant marine a large tonnage of ves-
sels that have been requisitioned for transport
services and for other naval uses. It should be
remembered that Germany's large merchant
marine will probably not be much reduced by
the war, and that some of the neutral countries,
including the United States, will have a larger
tonnage of merchant shipping at the close of
the war than they had at the beginning. After
the first few months have elapsed, following
the close of hostilities, the supply of ocean ship-
ping may be quite equal to the needs of com-
merce. If so, ocean freight rates will be reason-

171

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

able and may even be relatively low. Should
the revival of business at the close of the war
be, as some persons fear it will be, so active
and unrestrained as to lead to overproduction
and overtrading on the part of such countries
as can command the capital for industrial devel-
opment, and should this boom period be fol-
lowed by a severe panic within two or three
years after the end of the war, there will be a
superabundance of ocean shipping during the
years of business depression and freight rates
on the ocean will be unprofitably low.

The probable effect of the war upon immigra-
tion into the United States is a subject of great
importance. While the war lasts immigration
will be practically at a standstill, because most
of the immigrants come from the countries now
at war with each other. "Will the close of hos-
tilities be followed by a rush of immigrants to
this country, or will the higher wages in Europe
and the reduction which the war has made in
the number of laborers in Europe reduce the
volume of immigration to the United States 1

Every important European war during the
past one hundred years has been followed by an
increase in immigration into the United States.
After the 'close of the long Napoleonic wars

172

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

there was a marked rise in the tide of emigra-
tion, and the same was true of the years follow-
ing the European revolution of 1848. The
Franco-Prussian War also stimulated emigra-
tion to the United States. It is the opinion of
Dr. Frank J. Warne, who is a recognized au-
thority upon immigration questions, that the
present destructive war will greatly reduce the
economic opportunities of the working classes
of Europe; that extremely burdensome taxes
will necessarily be levied by all governments
to pay interest upon the debts created during
the war, and that economic distress will be in-
evitable and severe. Dr. Warne believes that
economic conditions in the United States will
be the opposite of those in Europe, and that the
prosperous times in this country will induce
great numbers of European families to seek by
emigration to escape from the unfortunate con-
ditions that will prevail in Europe. This ten-
dency to emigrate will, moreover, be strength-
ened by the active solicitation of steerage pas-
sengers that will be carried on by numerous
steamship lines. All of the transatlantic pas-
senger lines will be eager to make up for the
losses sustained because of the suspension of
passenger traffic during the war.

173

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

This forecast as to the effect of the war upon
immigration into the United States from Europe
will prove to be correct, provided the war lasts
as long as two years. If the struggle is con-
tinued for that length of time, the destruction
of capital and the paralysis of industry will be
so great as to make it difficult, if not impossible,
for European industries to regain their normal
activities until some years after the close of the
war. If the war should come to an end in 1915,
it may be that the industrial opportunities in
Europe will not be so lessened as to make it
necessary for the laboring classes of Europe
to seek a livelihood by emigration to the
United States. It should be remembered, more-
over, that the patriotic impulses of the masses
of people of every country have been aroused
and strengthened, and men may have a senti-
mental desire to remain in their native land and
help work out its future prosperity.

Should the war, as many persons expect, re-
sult in making the governments of continental
Europe more democratic in form and ideals,
the tendency to emigrate may be lessened ; but
it is doubtful whether emigration has much con-
nection with government institutions, although
it is often claimed that people have left Europe

174

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

for the United States to escape the oppression
of monarchical government, and to obtain the
liberties that may be secured under republican
institutions. It is probable that most people
have come to this country because the economic
opportunities here were greater than in their
native land. Political persecution has unques-
tionably driven many people from Europe to
the United States, but the number that have
come to this country for that reason is small
in comparison with those that have been at-
tracted^ here by the possibility of securing a
better livelihood.

It now seems probable that the European
"War will last for two years. If it is prolonged
to the end of 1916 there doubtless will be a
large exodus to the United States of immigrants
from Austria-Hungary, Poland, southwest Eus-
sia, the Balkan States and Italy, which are the
sections of Europe that are suffering severely
from the war and are the regions from which
immigrants to this country come in large num-
bers. The possibility that the war will be fol-
lowed by a rise in the arrivals in the United
States of large numbers of immigrants from
southeastern Europe makes it important that
measures should be taken by the United States

175

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

Government to prevent undesirable persons
from coming into the country. Such a wide-
spread and disastrous war as that now in prog-
ress in Europe is certainly to be followed by a
great increase in disease, poverty and crime.
Unless the immigration laws of the United
States are strictly administered, the people of
this country will have to support a largely in-
creased population of paupers and criminals.
It will be the duty of the United States Gov-
ernment to provide for the strict enforcement
of the immigration laws.

This brief analysis of the probable economic
effects of the European War upon, the United
States has naturally been devoted mainly to
questions of international banking and finance,
of foreign trade and ocean shipping, and
of immigration. The changes in the in-
ternational economic relations of the United
States promise to be important, permanent and,
for the most part, advantageous. If future ex-
perience corresponds with present promise, the
internal development as well as the foreign
commerce of the country will be quickened.

A large and wider foreign trade means a
greater volume and variety of production, an
increase in the quantity and range of imports,

176

THE WAR, COMMERCE AND FINANCE

a diversification of industry and commerce, and
a broadening of the foundations of American
economic interests. This means greater eco-
nomic stability, the ability to endure more easily
the recurring ills of business depression, and to
pursue a more conservative course through the
periods of abnormal prosperity.

During the last twenty-five years the United
States has been changing from a country de-
voted almost entirely to the production of foods
and the materials of industry to a country hav-
ing diversified industries in which manufactures
occupy a prominent position. The exportation
of manufactured goods is increasing in quan-
tity, and foreign markets are being found for
a greater variety of articles. The present ter-
rible war in Europe will accelerate the economic
changes now in progress in the United States.
Manufacturing and trade will increase more
rapidly and, in consequence, the growth of cities
will be faster. With the more rapid growth of
manufactures and foreign commerce and of the
population of the cities, will come consequent
changes in social conditions. The social ideals
of rural and village life that have hitherto been
so influential in this country will, because of the
more rapid development of manufacturing and

177

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

commerce, give way even more rapidly than
they are now giving way to the ideals of people
who work in large establishments and live in
large cities. The European War will change
the economic activities and modify social condi-
tions in the United States.

•

vn

THE CONDUCT OF MILITAEY AND
NAVAL WAKFAEE

CASPAB F. GOODKICH

I am sorry that the President's stringent or-
der on the subject forbids my discussing the
events of the present struggle in Europe with
entire freedom. You can readily see that to do
so might reveal a bias which would violate the
neutrality in speech and writing which our
Chief Magistrate enjoins. Nevertheless, with-
out transgressing that order it is possible to
analyze certain features and to draw certain
conclusions of technical interest, for this war
is as full of lessons as it is of surprises. To
call attention to them may be done, and I hope
I shall succeed in so doing, with complete im-
partiality of statement, if not of sympathy, and
in strict accordance with my Commander-in-
Chief 's injunction.

179

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

The first thing that strikes the eye is the total
wreck of preconceived notions. The long range
of modern arms was expected to push back the
fighting line almost, if not quite, out of sight of
the enemy. To be sure the opposing forces had
come into personal contact in the late Balkan
wars but this was attributed to local conditions
not likely to find their counterpart in hostilities
between first-class powers. That Germans and
Frenchmen should spend whole months in
trenches but a few yards apart, should burrow
like rabbits and settle the possession of dis-
puted ground by the bayonet or even the fist
was inconceivable — yet all know that was the
way the trick was turned again and again.
Conversely on the sea, the old time desire to
get close aboard the enemy may have been,
doubtless was, present, but the actions off Coro-
nel, off the Falkland Islands, and in the North
Sea were decided at ranges that seem fabulous.
One shell which landed on the Bluecher from a
distance of eighteen thousand yards — about
nine geographical miles — is thought by its dam-
age to life and vessel to have been, possi-
bly, the one most important factor in the de-
struction of that ship.

The greater range of the newest guns has also
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MILITARY AND NAVAL WARFARE

proved decisive on shore in bombardments that
recur to you all. The surprise, however, lies
in the unsuspected existence of such guns and
not in their efficacy. To have kept the forty-
two-centimeter howitzer a profound secret for
so long was in itself a triumph which, I fear,
our more open methods would have rendered
impossible in this country.

Speed in men-of-war, a quality advocated for
years by one school of naval thought and as
strongly opposed, at least in battleships, by an-
other school, seems to have practically demon-
strated its value in cruisers, destroyers and
submarines, as to which application there never
has been much controversy. Should the Ger-
man and British battle fleets ever engage, the
desirability of increasing speed at the expense
of armor will be proved or disproved as the case
may be. No more pressing question from the
naval architect's standpoint can be imagined.
It is saddening, however, to reflect on the price
in human life which its solution will exact.

Another surprise has been the extensive and
efficient use, by the Germans, of machine guns
of a novel type. Instead of the mitrailleuses
and Nordenf eldts which required horse traction
and were but another form of artillery these

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

new weapons can be and are carried by one
man. In destructive effect on troops the Al-
lies rank them as second only to shrapnel and
ahead of the rifle, and surely the Allies know.
The result is seen in a radical change in tac-
tics. Formerly artillery prepared the way for
the infantry attack. Today it is the machine
gun which is pushed to the front, infantry be-
ing used to cover and support its approach.

The appearance on the scene of wholly new
inventions like the motor lorry, the aeroplane
and the submarine has changed conditions en-
tirely and wrought unforeseen modifications in
tactics. It is said that the German advance on
Paris was stayed through the sudden bringing
up of heavy reinforcements from that city in
taxi-cabs and automobiles, some forty thousand
cars in all. Shades of Napoleon ! Without mo-
tor trucks and motor ambulances the men in the
field would, many times, have gone hungry
and the wounded without that prompt care
which so often makes the difference between life
and death. We may reflect with pride upon
the admitted superiority of our American Eed
Cross automobile hospitals. Piou-Piou and
Tommy Atkins equally rejoice when, if
wounded, they fall into our hands.

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MILITARY AND NAVAL WARFARE

Gasoline lias also made possible the armored
motor car of whose exploits frequent mention
is made. Armored trains were first used in the
Tel-el Kebir campaign — but their use was and
still is confined to railways. A fairly good
road, however, now permits the employment of
their more mobile and extremely effective suc-
cessor. Even heavy guns up to eleven inches
in caliber are moved by motors, the wheels be-
ing of the caterpillar type and thus capable
of advance over poor roadbeds.

To gasoline is due the flying machine which
as a scout renders sudden concentrations of
troops quite out of the question. Very spec-
tacular have been some of its performances in
raids and bomb-throwing. Doubts may be en-
tertained, however, of the real military value
of such operations.

Great things were expected of the Zeppelins
but, up to the present moment, these expecta-
tions do not appear to have been fully realized.
Damage they have done, but nothing commen-
surate with the hopes of their advocates. In
short, their tactical value has yet to be proved.
They are quite unmanageable in heavy weather,
a circumstance which doubtless has limited their
use this -winter. With the advent of spring and

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

summer, when gales are few and breezes light,
we shall learn more of their actual perform-
ance under favoring conditions.

The true history of the submarine cannot be
written until the war is over and all the facts
made public. Upon them was based the war
zone just proclaimed by Germany. Its effi-
ciency, it is thought by the Germans, will be
conclusive. As to this time alone will tell. That
the German submarines have been very active
and aggressive is certainly true but on good
authority it is said that a large number of them
have already been destroyed. They seem to be
as vulnerable as they are formidable.

Monitors and other light-draught vessels
have been used along the Belgian coast to help
stem the German advance on Calais. Nothing
new in this. Our Civil War abounds in in-
stances of effective cooperation between armies
on shore and gunboats on the water.

Wireless telegraphy is another recent inven-
tion to exercise a notable influence on the de-
velopment of this war. It is omnipresent, be-
ing found with troops or carried by men-of-war,
by torpedo boats, by air ships and even by sub-
marines, which doubtless owe much of their ef-
ficiency to this invisible means of control. We

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MILITARY AND NAVAL WARFARE

may indeed say that it is present with every
military or naval unit, however small. Its value
was so clearly understood by the Germans that,
in making ready for hostilities, they established
radio stations pretty much all over the world.
It was through such stations that they were
able to collect their scattered vessels into the
squadron which sank the Good Hope and Mon-
mouth off the Chilean coast last December.

But a few years old, wireless telegraphy has
so completely won its place in military and
naval equipments, that today it is impossible to
imagine a general or an admiral conducting a
campaign without the hourly use of this mar-
velous abridger of time and space.

I have sought, within the limitations imposed
on me by the President's order, to indicate a
few of the changes brought about in the tech-
nique of warfare. They are most important
and they convey useful hints even to us.

A similar search in the domain of strategy
remains fruitless. The same rules are observed
which governed the campaigns on land of Fred-
erick the Great and Napoleon and on the sea
those of Hawke and Nelson. Astounding as are
the differences between the tactics of the pres-
ent and the past, still more astounding is the

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PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT

changelessness of that other side of war —
strategy. What the latter was it ever will be.
The tactical instruments by which it works may
vary as they will but its principles are always
the same. Upon them we may rely with abso-
lute confidence. If you hold to them firmly you
will be able, through careful study, to see into
the future as far as it may be given to mortal
man; possibly even to forecast the eventual
outcome of this gigantic struggle. And this
study I commend to you as well worth the time
and trouble it may cost.

These, then, as I see them, are the chief les-
sons of the War in Europe, the protean changes
in tactics and the immutability of strategy.

(i)

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